Mage and Acolyte in Dark*Matter?

[Cowpie Zombie]

Dudes, I'm thinking of starting up a PBP for Dark*Matter: Shades of Grey. I've already decided to allow the Battle Mind and Telepath Advanced Classes; now I'm trying to decide if I want to let in the Mage and Acolyte.

PRO: Very cool classes, kewl powers for players (who says psions have all the fun?)

CON: Too "fantasyish" not "Dark*Matterish" enough.

COUNTER: The Diabolist, Hermetic Adept, and Visionary all have magic/spell-casting elements. So why not the Mage and Acolyte?

Any thoughts?

 

[Andrew D. Gable]

Don't allow them. The three classes you cite do have magic to them, but it's nowhere on the scale of the Mage/Acolyte. Not that they're as high-magic as DnD, but as I see it, still way too high-magic for Dark*Matter. Even the psi classes, personally, I would tinker with a bit.

On the other hand, I'd be interested in playing this when you get it up and going. Dark*Matter is teh cool.

 

[buzz]

The Diabolist, Hermetic Adept, and Visionary all, IIRC, need to burn APs in order to work their magic, and that's a lot more limiting than the FX classes in the d20M core book. This fits the feel of D*M. IMHO, I think that the Mage/Acolyte are a bit too high-powered for the default D*M setting, and agree that the Battle Mind and Telepath classes are as well, unless you severely limit how many levels a PC can take in them.

Of course, it's your game. If you want a higher-powered version of D*M, then go ahead. I definitely wouldn't mix the D*M classes with the core FX classes, though; they're two different power levels.

 

[JPL]

Have you thought about using incantation magic instead?

Even if you don't have Urban Arcana, the rules are now in the SRD.

Fire-and-forget magic would certainly change the tone of the setting. That's not necessarily a bad thing, though.

 

[jaerdaph]

For the d20 Modern D*M campaign I'm putting together, I've decided to disallow all the advanced classes from the sample campaigns chapter (Mage, Acolyte, Occultist, Shadow Slayer, Battle Mind, and Telepath), and use the Modern Psychic advanced class from The Psychic's Handbook (from Green Ronin) instead of the Telepath. I know the Occultist was recommended in the Dark*Matter: Shades of Grey mini campaign recently in Dungeon, but I didn't think it was a good fit for D*M. I also intend to allow some of the advanced classes from the Modern Player's Companion (The Game Mechanics/Green Ronin) as well. All the advanced and prestige classes from the D*M Dungeon mini-game will of course be allowed.

 

[Katowice]

Alternatively, you could use the Call of Cthulhu d20 system for magic and sanity. This system is mostly reprinted in Unearthed Arcana. A character's starting Sanity (and starting maximum Sanity) is based on their Wis x 5.

In Call of Cthulhu, magic is a dark and alien power. Whenever a spellcaster learns a new spell, he loses sanity. He also loses sanity when he casts spells. There are three levels of sanity loss, based on the type of campaign you want to run: Minor, Medium, Extreme (which I guess equates to how "dark and mysterious" you want magic to be in your campaign). The sanity loss for the spell cast is equal to the spell level for Minor, equal to 2 x spell level for Medium, or a number of d6 equal to the spell level for Extreme.

So, if I were running a campaign where magic causes a Medium loss of sanity and a character cast a 3rd level spell, he would lose 6 sanity.

Anytime the character loses sanity, he becomes temporarily insane (again, CoC and Unearthed Arcana have complete rules). Once you go to -10 sanity, your character is permanently insane. There are also sanity losses for seeing dead bodies, non-human creatures, demons, and other things that "just aren't right."

There's also an additional skill called Knowledge (Forbidden Lore), which was called Cthulhu Mythos in CoC d20. You can't take this skill at 1st level, but you acquire ranks in it anytime you read a dark tome of magic or learn something about the dark occult powers. Having ranks in Knowledge (Forbidden Lore) subtracts from your maximum sanity.

For example, I create Devon the Mage with a Wis 15. His starting Sanity is 15 x 5 = 75. His maximum Sanity is also 75. Along the way, he reads a dark tome of magic and acquires a Knowledge (Forbidden Lore) rank of 4. His maximum Sanity is now 71. Down the road he learns a 2nd level spell (losing 2 Sanity) and casts the spell three times (losing 6 Sanity total). His maximum Sanity is still 71, but now his current Sanity is 63.

If Devon gets healing for his Sanity from someone with the proper skill (probably Treat Injury or Knowledge [Behavioral Science] in d20 Modern], he can recover some Sanity, but never more the maximum. Basically, the character becomes more unhinged as he delves deeper into the mysteries of the Occult.

Lastly, there's an optional rule for "Getting Used to Awfulness" in the form of Sanity Resistance, which is some base number (3?) that increases by +1 per level. This is so that really high level characters get used to the sight of some of the terrible things they encounter.

Anyhow, these are some options for adapting Magic FX to Dark*Matter d20. I hope they write something up about it in Polyhedron sometime.

 

[Cowpie Zombie]

I'm familiar with the CoC Sanity rules--ran a d20 Cthulhu game last year in which the characters found themselves stuck in a deserted (and haunted, naturally ) backwater town in rural Iowa. I'm not a big fan of the Sanity mechanic of Wisdom x 5; it seems clunky to me since it is basically taking a d% stat and grafting it onto a d20 system. If I were to make Sanity a factor in Dark*Matter I'd much rather work something out involving Wisdom damage, either temporary or permanent.

Having said that, I don't foresee making sanity a factor in my Dark*Matter games. My vision of D*M is pulpier and more adventure-driven, and less brooding and despairing.

However, the CoC mechanic for psionic abilities (which, if I recall correctly, they referred to as "Psychic Abilities") *was* quite nice...but to be honest, I'm quite happy with d20 Modern's Telepath class (though the Battle Mind is a bit too powerful for what I have in mind).

 

[jaerdaph]

If I were to make Sanity a factor in Dark*Matter I'd much rather work something out involving Wisdom damage, either temporary or permanent.

Next time you're in your game store, check out the Horror check rules in Mongoose Publishing's OGL Horror.

Horror checks are divided into three types - Panic, Fear and Madness, with a Shock points system for Horror checks that fail miserably. Shock points penalize future Horror checks further, and can have long term as well as short term effects. You buy off Shock points at the end of the game session, and if you have accumulated enough that you can't get rid of them all, you need to buy them off by picking up mental disorders.

And I love the fact that drowning yourself in a bottle of booze lets you shake off the effects of Shock points, if only for a little while...