What is a budding psionicist/mage deity to do?

So, I think it'd be really cool to play a mind mage in an IH campaign sometime, and was interested in, uncreatively, the magic portfolio. The only problem? A First One with the double magic portfolio has a psi-dead home plane (not exactly a serious problem, true, but it'd be nice to be able to reach there)... and the psionic portfolio has a built-in antagonism to magic, particularly, "you must have no spellcasting classes."

Oh, here we go, one way to get around this is only gain spellcasting classes AFTER ascension. Then I could, in fact, roll with an immortal of both psionics and magic.

But, ehhh, is there anything that can be done about the more substandard X Pariah portfolio abilities? I get that portfolio powers shouldn't necessarily be the most optimal, but I think we all should admit that having the Good portfolio and the Unholy Pariah ability is really useful (as evil spells are often tailored specifically to screw over good beings), while there's no particular benefit that banning psionics from your home dimension of magic, or for that matter, banning ice from your home dimension of lightning, provides.

Then again, couldn't I just use the whole Changing Abilities thing from table 4-3 on p 97 to not make my dimension that is of both Psionics and Magic nullify Magic?

Howdy Deinos,

while I know I set up Magic and Psionics (via Science) in opposition to one another, I think this should really be a campaign specific decision for the DM.

I know that in our own campaign we had numerous Psionic-Wizards not to mention many of the 1E Deities & Demigods immortals were both Psionically gifted and Arcane Spellcasters to some degree.

I think we can justify this along the lines of a "sufficiently advanced technology is akin to magic" type argument.

So I think the question will boil down to setting something up in opposition to MAGIC portfolios other than Science.

Any suggestions?

Upper_Krust said:

Howdy Deinos,

Click to expand...

Hey man, how you doing these days?

Upper_Krust said:

Any suggestions?

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The whole barbarian/berserker thing seems like it might be a good alternative to what opposes wizardry. I have seen the idea of berserkering opposing wizarding in many scenarios:

So Conan's the most obvious (not sure I'd call him a berserker), opposing wizards. Also not quite clear that Crom opposes wizards, personally. But...

In Warhammer, Khorne, which seems to be largely inspired by Crom, is an extremely angry and violent chaos deity who hates magic users. Khorne followers have all manner of not only close combat boosts but ways to screw up wizards; in Warhammer 40k, his stuff, naturally, applies to psi.

In Dungeon Crawl, the god Trog is another monosyllabic barbarian/berserker deity who grants not just the ability to go into a berserk rage, but lets you sustain it longer (with repeated killing), greatly appreciates the death of wizards, grants Trog's Hand (which makes it so you not only regenerate, but also gain magic resistance), and even has the ability of Brothers in Arms, which lets you call upon a bear, ogre, troll, or giant who is already in a berserk rage, and who remains in a rage far longer than you do. It costs a bit of favor with your god, so you normally want to use it in an emergency to save your skin.

The thing with Trog is that although he's great for a melee character, he becomes enraged if you attempt to learn or use -spell- magic. Oh, and he can let you call upon loose spellbooks to burst into flames, which you can use as landmines.

The original barbarian, as well as the 3.0 forsaker class, has a lot of built in antipathy towards magic as well.

So there's a lot of instances of berserker or barbarian types despising magic, including, in at least two cases, gods being that way. Of course, gods themselves are rather supernatural beings, and so the distinction of both Trog and Khorne is that they hate -spell- magic (for whatever reason), or psionics. And finally, the "berserkers/barbarians despise spellcasters" thing is the only precedent for people who hate all casters, or at least all arcane casters, that has not only been in since 1e but shown up in a video game and in a wargame.

There is the parallel in that you can't usually cast spells in a rage or a frenzy, but your magic items don't shut off. There is a further parallel in that rage gives you a bonus to strength and constitution, but the Magic portfolio gives you a penalty to strength and constitution.

What would the Portfolio be called? I'm not sure. If one wished to incorporate the Trog angle of calling upon ogres, trolls, and giants as Brothers in Arms (not to mention that they are what Trog sends to punish those who betray him) as well as the theme of the destruction of knowledge (especially forbidden knowledge), you could perhaps have a "Babel" portfolio (the tower of Babel type story is associated with the loss of language and with giants in some cases), that encompasses both furious and often gigantic might, concepts of an overall Giant-type portfolio (epic level Giant type usage is EXTREMELY rare), and various ways to attack and harm arcane spellcasters and psionics.

The capstone ability of the portfolio could be analogous to that of the Healing portfolio; just as that lets you deny Healing to anyone or anywhere in the universe (I think there's one that lets you deny Sleep or Rest, which is perhaps even more powerful), this would allow you to deny Language or coherent Speech to anyone in the universe. This wouldn't, automatically, let you shut down all spellcasters, but it'd severely hinder anyone who didn't have the Silent Spell metamagic feat and greatly annoy those who did.

Oh and of course, this could suggest the portfolio had something to do with your take on Nimrod, rather than the confusion of tongues being an epic spell.