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Theory crafting 'Contact Spirit' spell
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<blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 6949591" data-attributes="member: 4937"><p>This is the commonly espoused theory that divination shouldn't work. That may well work for some GMs, but I have no particular concern about my plots being ruined or my players being able to out think me. My preferred approach is more like Gumshoe - it's always better if players learn things and the fun part is making choices based on what they learn. I <em>want</em> the players to find clues. Nothing is worse than having players who are lost and don't have a plan. Besides, it's always possible to limit the info. Compared to something like Commune, this breaks nothing.</p><p></p><p>Even a very powerful world spanning spirit - in my game, a totemic spirit with 20HD or more, that is the sort a shaman could have as a patron - has only a fairly small chance of being able to give correct answers to specific questions ("tell me about this dragon..."), as opposed to answers about general lore ("tell me about dragons..."). And you have to be fairly high level to get more than 1-2 questions in. So that's what 15% chance of knowing specific things for 1-2 questions, and no chance of knowing specific secrets ("where is the crown of infinite sorrows buried..." or "who killed the young prince..."). If the PC abuses this relationship with such a powerful, then the ability is limited by the fact that if you bother it frequently, it will get angry. And if you bother an angry spirit, it possibly won't cooperate and it may even try to punish you for your offense. Some stupid 3rd level shaman has a totem to the Hungering Beast, and isn't Evil aligned, and decide he'd like to talk to contact Urglick he's probably going to die. And likewise, even if you don't die, if you were bothering a totemic spirit - the Prince of Cats, the Grandmother of Oaks, The Hungering Beast - you just made a whole portion of the world hostile to you. You effectively just cursed yourself with a curse that remove curse isn't sufficient to remove. It's mostly going to be flavor, but every once and awhile you're going to want to do something like climb an oak tree and now it matters that oaks everywhere hate you.</p><p></p><p>To a certain extent I want this spell to carry some of the weight that the Call of Cthulhu 'Contact' spells carry, while providing some divination ability from very low level. But mostly what this spell serves is world building. This is a spell that tells you a lot about how my world works, and conversely this is a spell that should exist because of how my world works.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Celebrim, post: 6949591, member: 4937"] This is the commonly espoused theory that divination shouldn't work. That may well work for some GMs, but I have no particular concern about my plots being ruined or my players being able to out think me. My preferred approach is more like Gumshoe - it's always better if players learn things and the fun part is making choices based on what they learn. I [I]want[/I] the players to find clues. Nothing is worse than having players who are lost and don't have a plan. Besides, it's always possible to limit the info. Compared to something like Commune, this breaks nothing. Even a very powerful world spanning spirit - in my game, a totemic spirit with 20HD or more, that is the sort a shaman could have as a patron - has only a fairly small chance of being able to give correct answers to specific questions ("tell me about this dragon..."), as opposed to answers about general lore ("tell me about dragons..."). And you have to be fairly high level to get more than 1-2 questions in. So that's what 15% chance of knowing specific things for 1-2 questions, and no chance of knowing specific secrets ("where is the crown of infinite sorrows buried..." or "who killed the young prince..."). If the PC abuses this relationship with such a powerful, then the ability is limited by the fact that if you bother it frequently, it will get angry. And if you bother an angry spirit, it possibly won't cooperate and it may even try to punish you for your offense. Some stupid 3rd level shaman has a totem to the Hungering Beast, and isn't Evil aligned, and decide he'd like to talk to contact Urglick he's probably going to die. And likewise, even if you don't die, if you were bothering a totemic spirit - the Prince of Cats, the Grandmother of Oaks, The Hungering Beast - you just made a whole portion of the world hostile to you. You effectively just cursed yourself with a curse that remove curse isn't sufficient to remove. It's mostly going to be flavor, but every once and awhile you're going to want to do something like climb an oak tree and now it matters that oaks everywhere hate you. To a certain extent I want this spell to carry some of the weight that the Call of Cthulhu 'Contact' spells carry, while providing some divination ability from very low level. But mostly what this spell serves is world building. This is a spell that tells you a lot about how my world works, and conversely this is a spell that should exist because of how my world works. [/QUOTE]
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