Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 8999639" data-attributes="member: 27780">Polyhedron Issue 137: July 1999part 4/5Mentors, Patrons & Sponsors: Here we go again. Time for some more basic roleplaying advice. It can be a lot quicker and easier to get to the fun part of adventuring if you have someone more powerful giving you a leg up, providing you with equipment, tuition and pointing you in the direction of any quests. But what is the difference between the three titles? A mentor is more likely to be teaching you because they genuinely like you and think you have potential rather than for any monetary reward. A sponsor is more likely to be a shorter term relationship, helping you get into an exclusive organisation. A patron is more likely to be expecting something from you in return for their support, be it a cut of the treasure or the accomplishment of particular heroic deeds. Another of those reminders of how play has changed over the years from just going down into whatever dungeons are there to exploring the personality & backstory of your character and going on missions for NPC's. Yet at the same time, it's a reminder that all that plate mail, 10 foot poles, lamps and whatnot that old school adventurers took for granted didn't just appear from nothing and the average adventurer must have come from a decently advanced society to get hold of all that before even starting play. Not that you can't have interesting adventures taking all those assumptions away, as Athas and Malatra have shown, but you need to either compensate for the power reduction in other ways or recalibrate the degree of dangers they face if you want them to make it past 1st level. Really, this demonstrates the degree of privilege you enjoy as a human. You may not have infravision or inherent spell-like abilities, but you're from a big society that mostly works together and supports each other where most other creatures wouldn't, and that gives you the space to learn things instead of going straight to scrabbling to survive. That has far more of a long-term compound benefit than a few flashy special abilities. So despite being fairly short and basic as an article, this has actually given me quite a bit to think about. It's nice when that happens.Astral Threats: Since we've already had one planar article this issue, two might seem like overkill, but a lot of multiverses have astral planes and it turns out this is for Shadowrun rather than Planescape. Exploring other universes is still in it's infancy here and there's a lot of dangers to discover, a lot of research to do before you can go there and come back safely. Here's some of them, presented with the usual cynical chatroom banter.FAB Rounds use sophisticated modern targeting systems to explode a cloud of bacteria in the middle of an astral form, seriously messing up the day of anyone who thinks they can waltz in and do a bit of corporate espionage completely undetected. A very interesting use of previously established setting details to accomplish that goal nonmagically, I strongly approve of this.Allurers are your basic siren things that assume an attractive shape and hypnotise astral travellers with their singing, keeping you there until you die from running out of essence. Another good reason to have someone watching your back and not be the only spellcaster in a team.Krabben are elephant sized crab/octopus things that bear a fair amount of resemblance to the thing on the cover of the AD&D manual of the planes, but not quite enough to be copyright liable. They can manifest on the material plane as well, so once you've got their attention there's no easy escape. A serious fight for the whole party whichever arena you choose to fight them in. Ant Lions also resemble their earthly counterpart, only much larger. They're not quite as terrifying as Krabben in terms of size & power, but somewhat smarter, able to trace your silver cord back to your body and manifest there to attack your companions after chomping you on the astral plane. The more magic levels rise, the more things like this will be found near to earth and the more dangerous casual astral jaunts will become.</blockquote>

Verification