In an anime-themed game I'm going to be running over the summer, there will be no magic. However, all the player classes will be available. No, I'm not forcing wizards to play commoners with good will saves. Instead, "magic" will be called "techniques," and come from a mixture of things, such as little-understood laws of physics, ki power, trickery, and a whoooole lot of BS.
I'm looking for ideas on how certain spells could be done through this method. Here are some interesting suggestions I've received from other forums so far: (Thanks to the original authors)
Alter Self: Tricky, because there are no material components. Let's see...as a Standard action, you rapidly gather up materials from your environment to function as a crude disguise. Combined with a subtle hypnotic chant, your opponents believe that you are, in fact, what your disguise is supposed to look like. The disguise, despite being crude, is good enough to provide a natural armor bonus or for scrap-based wings to give flight.
Animate Dead: You affix the gem material components to the center of gravity of the corpse, within the spine, replacing a vertebrae. Using invisibly fine wires attached to each facet of the gem, you crudely manipulate the corpse like a puppet from afar.
Bestow Curse: There really is no curse. With a few accupunture points and a malign invocation (specifying the exact nature of the curse), you trick the person into thinking there is a curse on them. Placebo effect can do amazing things.
Blink: Moving at very high speed but changing your speed randomly and rapidly, so you appear to move in and out of existence. Because you are moving truly randomly, you'll sometimes miss despite yourself.
Cure (light, moderate, etc): A series of accupressure strikes combined with focusing mantras that relieve pain and invigorate their target.
Fireball: Uses a chemical reaction between sulphur and the phosphorus in bat guano to produce an explosion.
Floating Disk: You throw the droplet of mercury on the ground at such an angle as to cause it to slowly vaporize with intense pressure, producing a disk-shaped cloud of mercury vapor that can support a certain amount of weight.
Foresight: looking through the hollow of the hummingbird's feather acts as a powerful telescope, and held at the proper angle, it vibrates in response to any danger to one's person. Or a passing breeze, whatever.
Glitterdust: Really, this one almost speaks for itself. You blow bits of mica into the air that get in targets' eyes and sparkle brightly.
Hold Person: The bar of iron actually controls a complex system of invisible wires that you wrap around the target and any nearby objects, holding them in place.
Hypnotic Pattern: You mix some phosphorescent material in a crystal rod and snap it, manipulating it so the light plays through the prisms created. The colors and lights act on the brain and fascinate creatures.
Magic Missile: by vibrating your finger at *just* the correct frequency, you manage to produce an EM wave that propagates in a rectilinear fashion directly from your finger to the target, producing a minor shock and heat impact.
Mirror Image: After some focusing mantras, you start moving between several points at such speed it looks like there's up to 9 of you.
Mordenkainen's Magnificent Mansion: The PCs are trekking through a hostile wilderness when, all of a sudden, the fog parts to reveal an opulent estate which seems to have been built yesterday, but is totally abandoned...
Polar Ray: Your chant, combined with the unique vibrational properties of the prism material component, alters the vibration of the air around the target to instantaneously drop its temperature to a couple of degrees below absolute zero, flash-freezing him.
Polymorph: You use powerful hormones left in the cocoon by the rare species of butterfly that produces it, combined with a series of accupressure strikes, to cause massive, instantaneous mutations.
Prestidigation: Sleight of Hand.
Prying Eyes: By holding the crystal marbles in your hand in a certain configuration and with a certain directional flow of light, the light refracts through each of them to show glowing balls surrounding your person, arranged just so that light refracts from them into your own eyes. By jumbling around the marbles just so, you can have the "eyes" travel about and have the light passing through them pass into your own eyes.
Touch of Idiocy: A precise accupressure strike to the neck that restricts blood flow to the brain, muddling thought.
Undeath to Death: You spray the diamond powder material component in such a way as to slice through the invisibly fine wires that manipulate enemy corpse-puppets. Alternatively, you throw your holy symbol like a chakram, and it bounces off the walls cutting through wires until it returns to your hand.
I'm looking for ideas on how certain spells could be done through this method. Here are some interesting suggestions I've received from other forums so far: (Thanks to the original authors)
Alter Self: Tricky, because there are no material components. Let's see...as a Standard action, you rapidly gather up materials from your environment to function as a crude disguise. Combined with a subtle hypnotic chant, your opponents believe that you are, in fact, what your disguise is supposed to look like. The disguise, despite being crude, is good enough to provide a natural armor bonus or for scrap-based wings to give flight.
Animate Dead: You affix the gem material components to the center of gravity of the corpse, within the spine, replacing a vertebrae. Using invisibly fine wires attached to each facet of the gem, you crudely manipulate the corpse like a puppet from afar.
Bestow Curse: There really is no curse. With a few accupunture points and a malign invocation (specifying the exact nature of the curse), you trick the person into thinking there is a curse on them. Placebo effect can do amazing things.
Blink: Moving at very high speed but changing your speed randomly and rapidly, so you appear to move in and out of existence. Because you are moving truly randomly, you'll sometimes miss despite yourself.
Cure (light, moderate, etc): A series of accupressure strikes combined with focusing mantras that relieve pain and invigorate their target.
Fireball: Uses a chemical reaction between sulphur and the phosphorus in bat guano to produce an explosion.
Floating Disk: You throw the droplet of mercury on the ground at such an angle as to cause it to slowly vaporize with intense pressure, producing a disk-shaped cloud of mercury vapor that can support a certain amount of weight.
Foresight: looking through the hollow of the hummingbird's feather acts as a powerful telescope, and held at the proper angle, it vibrates in response to any danger to one's person. Or a passing breeze, whatever.
Glitterdust: Really, this one almost speaks for itself. You blow bits of mica into the air that get in targets' eyes and sparkle brightly.
Hold Person: The bar of iron actually controls a complex system of invisible wires that you wrap around the target and any nearby objects, holding them in place.
Hypnotic Pattern: You mix some phosphorescent material in a crystal rod and snap it, manipulating it so the light plays through the prisms created. The colors and lights act on the brain and fascinate creatures.
Magic Missile: by vibrating your finger at *just* the correct frequency, you manage to produce an EM wave that propagates in a rectilinear fashion directly from your finger to the target, producing a minor shock and heat impact.
Mirror Image: After some focusing mantras, you start moving between several points at such speed it looks like there's up to 9 of you.
Mordenkainen's Magnificent Mansion: The PCs are trekking through a hostile wilderness when, all of a sudden, the fog parts to reveal an opulent estate which seems to have been built yesterday, but is totally abandoned...
Polar Ray: Your chant, combined with the unique vibrational properties of the prism material component, alters the vibration of the air around the target to instantaneously drop its temperature to a couple of degrees below absolute zero, flash-freezing him.
Polymorph: You use powerful hormones left in the cocoon by the rare species of butterfly that produces it, combined with a series of accupressure strikes, to cause massive, instantaneous mutations.
Prestidigation: Sleight of Hand.
Prying Eyes: By holding the crystal marbles in your hand in a certain configuration and with a certain directional flow of light, the light refracts through each of them to show glowing balls surrounding your person, arranged just so that light refracts from them into your own eyes. By jumbling around the marbles just so, you can have the "eyes" travel about and have the light passing through them pass into your own eyes.
Touch of Idiocy: A precise accupressure strike to the neck that restricts blood flow to the brain, muddling thought.
Undeath to Death: You spray the diamond powder material component in such a way as to slice through the invisibly fine wires that manipulate enemy corpse-puppets. Alternatively, you throw your holy symbol like a chakram, and it bounces off the walls cutting through wires until it returns to your hand.
