What else is arcane mark for?

[fafhrd]

Who says? The long-term effects of thaumic radiation on plants and other living entities is insufficiently explored. Wait until that tree carries leaves or fruit in the form of your arcane mark - which makes it easy for militant druids to identify the culprit.

"Early this morning we started receiving reports of battle between the Ashbound Druidical Sect and Deneith mercenaries in the employ of the Eldeen Ranchers Association. The A.D.S. had previously vowed retaliation against the ranchers over the creation of Rune Corn(TM)"

 

[Loincloth of Armour]

These are all really neat ideas. I wonder, however, if keying a mark to a spell like scry or teleport doesn't actually sort of reduce the effective power of that spell?

While I can't speak for ElectricDragon, I think the idea here was to allow the spells to exist in the game, but set up a few more restrictions on them to make them less subject to player abuse. Ie: less Scry-buff-teleport if you've got to have your arcane mark at a location, but it will still allow you to flee back to your stronghold when you're in deep doo-doo.

In my case, I use the arcane marked magic items to provide lower level threats with cheap, more easily made items. Sort of like Dragonmark items in Eberron: they allow effects only for those with the mark (although in this case, it's arcane mark as opposed to Dragonmarks).

I admit, it's somewhat of a DM 'cheat' to give NPCs magic items that would otherwise be out of their price range, and yet not be game breaking when (not if) the players get their hands on them. Ie: Bad guy lieutenants carry a one-shot dimension door item that is keyed to the presence of the BBEG's arcane mark being on the user. If the lieutenant can use it to escape, great (recurring villian). If the PCs kill the lieutenant and take the item, great... there's a plot hook to draw the characters in ("Who does this mark belong to"), and the fact it requires that specific arcane mark it keeps certain magic items out of circulation with the party for a while. I do allow them to 're-key' the item, but assign a cost in gold and time to soak up some of that extra cash PCs always seem to have lying around.

Besides, doors that open by themselves and close after someone are great for atmosphere. It also allows the bad guys a better chance to get away if they don't have to stop and spend a move action opening the door themselves.

 

[Dross]

What if all of them changed at once? It would be your mark, but people would need to look it up every time to confirm it's still the right one.

That would be annoying IMHO... but possible.

Cheers, -- N

hhmm, as stated, possible, but then all written directional indiccations (like 'GONRTH') would be useless. I'd also go far to say that the orientations would remain the same as when initially casted (which would make pre-planning rather involved).

However I feel that that such an interpretation wonders into houserules territory.

 

[ElectricDragon]

These are all really neat ideas. I wonder, however, if keying a mark to a spell like scry or teleport doesn't actually sort of reduce the effective power of that spell? Or are you saying that the spell works like normal, except that if a wizard popped in, marked something, and then popped out, they could still teleport there as if they had "studied" the place "carefully," even though they had not? (Same with scry - a quick brand and then, boom: "familiar?")

Well, yes, sort of. For teleport, this is on cue. But scrying can only be attempted on a creature, not an area (use clairvoyance for that). Add the two together to be able to teleport to an area only seen by scrying on a person that has your mark (teleport as if studied carefully).

Ciao
Dave

 

[Bad Paper]

In one of Monte Cook's adventures, there is a throne where if anyone other than the throne's owner touches it, the throne curses the toucher and places an arcane mark upon that person.

The curse: -4 on saves vs spells or spell-like abilities cast by the owner of the throne.

When the owner encounters the party, it checks for the mark. If present, it concentrates all its abilities on the easy meat first.

And yes, I do mean "it."

 

[Thikket]

I see no reason why the orientation of an Arcane Mark could not be altered on casting. Imagine casting this on a piece of paper -- will the mark always be "right side up", no matter how you turn the paper?

Anyway, it's neat that a bunch of people thought of using the Arcane Mark as a cipher, which is exactly what a high-ish level NPC did in one of my old campaigns.

His mark was a staff with a distinguished tip and end. You could easily do the same thing with anything that has a distinguishable front and back (like an arrow |--->).

The cipher was created by placing the mark in any of the 12 clock positions and either putting the mark "high" or "low"; that is, the four horizontal positions

           |--->               <---|
|--->               <---|

would all have different character representations. This allows for 24 distinct characters, which is more than sufficient. To make the cipher a little less trivial for the players (since this is a direct substitution cipher, you'd be able to figure it out with a decent sample size), I defined some orientations/heights as common digraphs (two letter pairs like "th" or "in") and omitted a few rather unnecessary characters completely ("c" and "q" can be spoofed by other letters,
"z" and "j" are very infrequent and could be similarly replaced). This was also nice in that it lowered the number of spells to cast to properly mark a word or phrase (oftentimes the word or phrase was truncated as well, or written in text-message style).

At first I thought the angles might be a little confusing (eyeballing 7 o'clock vs. 8 o'clock seems tricky sometimes, especially with small lines), but the players had no problems on that front, probably since I helped them out by printing the dang things out when they found them.

The messages were never really important, but sometimes they were nice bonus clues. One of the players (the one who had permanent Arcane Sight, heh) took notes of any diagrams they found and caught on to the cipher relatively early, and it became a source of fun information for them. I guess people enjoy cryptoquotes in the paper, and this is a perfect example of that.

 

[Deset Gled]

I could cast Arcane Mark to inscribe -Hyp. on a sword, or to inscribe -Hyp. on a wall, or to inscribe -Hyp. on a harlot's shoulder. But I couldn't cast Arcane Mark to inscribe "GOWEST" at one intersection, and "GONRTH" at another intersection, despite those being only six characters long, because they aren't my personal rune or mark.

-GONRTH.

This, or course, is why King Smith always sent a party of four travelers to lead the army. Gonorth, the noble necromancer, Gosouth, the sneaky sorcerer, Goeast, the evangelical evoker, and Gowest, the waskily wogue. Together, they could leave marks to lead the army through the thickest forest or most challenging maze.

 

[lukelightning]

This spell allows you to inscribe your personal rune or mark, which can consist of no more than six characters.

Six characters? Sweet! Mine are an Archmage, a Cleric....

Seriously, though, I interpret this spell as creating the same mark every time you cast it; you have one set "personal mark" which you can't change.

 

[fafhrd]

It may be of some use to note that in Eberron, you're allowed to perform an alternate 10 minute casting time version of arcane mark along with use of the forgery skill to try and replicate someone else's mark.