Some more thoughts on sorcerous artifacts

When the Liber Ka rules first came out in 1995, they more or less invalidated the rules for artifacts previously published in the Gamemaster's Companion. Nephilim no longer needed to find foci to cast spells, but cast Casual Magic without any and could design their own foci as needed to cast Ritual Magic and High Magic. It wasn't until Enlightened Magic in 2014 that LK-compatible magic item rules were finally added, and these amounted to single-spell inscriptions of Ritual Magic or High Magic that you could carry around and share with anyone who knew Casual Magic (as spell inscription wasn't included in EM except for third circle alchemy meditations). Meanwhile, the 2nd edition of the French and subsequent editions provided “Past Points” at character creation: letting players buy foci, artifacts, and other goodies saved from past lives to start play with.

My quick-and-dirty house rule for reconciling these was... to do basically nothing. The GMC-style artifacts allowed any Nephilim to use the enchantments without even knowing any Sorcery at all because the artifact had its own magic technique rating, so I just kept that while adding the restriction from LK/EM that only Ritual Magic and High Magic could be enchanted. 

But then there's other considerations. In GMC, artifacts can only be activated by Nephilim, whereas secret societies must activate artifacts using Sacrifices, Elixirs, and Homunculi. First edition artifacts are foci! In the second edition French version, "active" artifacts were introduced that had their own Ka and could be used without those by secret society initiates who knew the keyword and performed a ritual under specific conditions. In the third edition French version, all artifacts were active and could be readily used by anyone who knew the keyword without any roll even if they lacked Elemental Ka or Magic Techniques. 

I don't want to diverge unnecessarily from the Chaosium lore, but I'd like to make artifacts attractive options to players. So while the PCs could create their own artifacts, both easily-made single-spell items and legendary artifacts of the third circle, during their adventures they could acquire artifacts with unique properties that they couldn't replicate themselves. While the secret societies relied on Sacrifices et al to activate artifacts, any Immortal (Nephilim, Selenim or Ar-KaIm) could activate it with the keyword due to their instinctive link to the magic fields.

Alchemical artifacts work as described in the Slaying the Dragon draft and Enlightened Magic. Unlike sorcerous artifacts, alchemical artifacts work for anyone: an artifactual athanor produces doses of the procedure enchanted for anyone who knows the corresponding mundane craft skill, while an artifactual artwork produces its effect every time it is observed, played or performed depending on its nature. Some procedures produce para-artifacts that don't fit into these two categories, like Binding Attraction's dowsing rod or Create the Golem's... golem. As I've said before, I want to expand the rules for automatons...

As for summoning artifacts... I have a few ideas on those: summoning the entity in question, acting as a receptacle for the entity (a la the archetypal genie's lamp), the entity is bound within the item and grants unique properties not unlike a relic, the entity is transformed into the item (a la Elric's sword Stormbringer), the summoner summons the item from the astral and materializes it on earth (talismans like this are used in the French), etc. I'll need to do a full post on that in the future...

The same applies to foci, for that matter. Those should be attractive enough to justify spending points on them at character creation and so on. The EM rules include provisions for grimoires: PCs are incentivized to track down grimoires for additional benefits like expanded parameters and so forth. I’m thinking of giving unique benefits that PCs cannot otherwise replicate, so the copies possessed by the PCs become that much more valuable. E.g. in Serpent Moon the PCs must at one point enter a sealed tomb, with an NPC providing a focus for Mole Bore to get inside. That spell doesn’t exist in LK, so I’d convert the focus into a unique spell that subtly creates an external door into the tomb.

Hope you enjoyed!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

“Fixing” the setting

These posts assume that the reader is already familiar with Nephilim , so don't expect an explanation of the game here. In addition to the clunky rules, and probably more important, the Nephilim game had fluff that alienated players in the Anglosphere. The rulebook frontloaded potential players with millennia of lore that they had to keep track of. Perhaps the most criticized aspect was that the titular nephilim were presented as parasites who possessed unwilling human hosts to pursue their agendas. While players were seemingly okay with playing murderous psychopaths in other games of the 90s, apparently body-thieves just weren't kosher. The English mailing list had numerous debates over this during its heyday. Rather than rehash those here, I'll cut straight to the point: in my revision of the setting, the nephilim are fusions of a human being and a soulless mindless elemental spirit . The human soul (Sol, Solar-Ka) provides will, purpose, desire, etc. The elemental spirit...
Read more

Simplifying the rules

One of the problems with the Nephilim game was that its rules, a variant of the venerable  BRP , were overly complicated and probably not all that well suited to it. The French version eventually dropped BRP entirely starting in its third edition, and the current fifth edition uses a dramatically simplified rules system. This has inspired me to devise my own simplified rules system for the English adaptation. I'm not going to convert to Fate like certain others have tried . The task resolution system will still be BRP's roll under d100 with difficulty levels and variable results. But all the character traits will change. The standard attributes/characteristics are Air-Ka, Earth-Ka, Fire-Ka, Lunar-Ka, Solar-Ka, and Water-Ka. These represent the physical, mental, and spiritual aspects of the character. For nephilim characters, these also represent supernatural aspects. Rather than distinct skills, characters are described in freeform terms and given general competence ratings....
Read more

The spiritual pentacle and the elements

Image
In this post I explain the spiritual meaning of the Nephilim’s pentacle and the Ka-elements themselves. Although linked to specific game statistics, like Fire to Strength and Moon to Charisma, all of the elements have physical, mental and spiritual correspondences and manifestations.  It’s not one or the other . You don’t have to posit different cultures all have different elements to explain varying beliefs. Real occultism isn’t supposed to be accurate in the game world anyway, but the result of information leaks and cargo cults by muggles. Liam Routt gave a good explanation in  his old FAQ : (I’m putting it between horizontal rules because blogger has issues with formatting) The Spiritual Pentagram Traditionally, the pentagram represents our spiritual, mental, emotional and physical composition: Fire Doing—Fire is energy, the power to act. But it is pure action, undirected by thought or feeling. Air Thinking—Air is thinking, ideation, mental activity, but it can...
Read more