Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Capellan" data-source="post: 3565007" data-attributes="member: 6294">It's a Kind of MagicThe final new class in the Iron Heroes Player's Companion is the Spiritualist.  Unlike arcanists, who personally shape magical energy into spells, Spiritualists petition otherworldly powers (demons, angels, ancestral spirits – the exact nature of these powers varies from spiritualist to spiritualist) to provide their magical powers.Conceptually, this can be seen as similar to the divide between arcane and divine casters in other fantasy roleplaying games.  However in those games there are few significant differences in the way arcane spells and divine spells are cast.  This is definitely not true of spiritualists.Creating a magical effect is a two step process for a spiritualist.  First they must petition the powers for the raw magical energy they need.  This is by no means a certain process.  The spirits are often fickle, or have whims and needs unknown to their mortal clients.  Sometimes a spiritualist will ask them for aid and receive far less power than she needs.  Sometimes she will receive far more than she can use ... and sometimes, her requests will anger those she has called upon.To gather magical energy, the spiritualist projects her consciousness into another plane of existence where she bargains with the spirits.  This bargaining may take many hours of time on the spiritual plane, but in the physical realm, mere seconds have passed – unfortunately, during those few seconds the spiritualist can find herself very vulnerable to her enemies.Mechanically, this process is represented by a Pact Check.  This is a level and Charisma-based check that establishes how much magical energy the spirits are willing to confer.  The more the Spiritualists exceeds the DC of the check, the more energy – represented by Pact Tokens – she receives.  A spiritualist who does not gain as many tokens as she needs can try to gather more in the following round (just like any other token pool), but maintaining all that spiritual energy is stressful: she suffers penalties on many checks whenever she has tokens in her Pact Pool.If a spiritualist fails a Pact Check, the spirits will strip her of power they have already granted her (costing her tokens), or even steal some of her life force if she does not have the tokens to lose.  Dealing with spirits is a dangerous task.The Pact Check DC is determined by the power of the entity the spiritualist contacts.  More powerful spirits have a higher DC for the Pact Check, making it more difficult to gain tokens, and increasing the risk that they will be angered by a petition.  However, they also have a higher maximum number of tokens they can confer, as well as being able to generate more powerful magical effects.  Thus a spiritualist must always balance risk and reward.  It is much safer to contact weaker spirits, but such entities are much more limited in the powers they can grant.Once a spiritualist has gathered enough tokens for her needs (or has declined to risk any further Pact Checks), she can design the magical effect she wants.  Unlike arcanists, who think in terms of 'schools' of magic, Spiritualists learn a number of different rituals.  Each ritual allows them to create effects of a certain type.  When the spiritualist makes her Pact Check, she must nominate for which ritual she is gathering tokens.  This is considered to be the 'target' of her token pool.  As with other targeted pools, if the spiritualist later decides to gather tokens for another ritual (thus changing her target) she loses all accumulated tokens she already possesses.Each magical effect a spiritualist creates is comprised of five components:* Type of effect* Severity of effect* Range* Area of Effect* DurationThe more tokens spent on each of these components, the more potent that component becomes.  However, there is a limit to how many tokens can be spent on each, based on the power of the spirits with whom the spiritualist made her pact.Introducing a token-based magic system has a couple of interesting game implications.  Firstly, it all but eliminates a 'daily limit' on spells.  Over a whole day, the spiritualist has a great deal of durability as a spellcaster.  However, this long term durability is balanced by short term strain: contacting the spirits is a taxing process, and these entities do not like to be bothered too often.  A spiritualist who makes a lot of Pact Checks in a short period will quickly find her rewards diminishing and her risks increasing.A second implication of the token-based system is that spiritualists must be willing to risk the quirks of fate.  Sometimes they'll be blessed with large amounts of spiritual energy; perhaps even enough to cast two or more spells without making another check.  Other times, they'll make bargain after bargain and gain only a trickle of power.  There are ways a spiritualist can improve her odds in the Pact Check ... but they almost all come with a cost.The final portion of this preview is a listing of all eighteen spiritualist rituals:<img src="http://i11.photobucket.com/albums/a189/crowroadaw/rituals.jpg" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " data-size="" style="" /></blockquote>

Verification