MythCraft Online SRD - User contributions [en]

Armor of Starlight

2024-02-05T12:09:47Z

Self-Help:

''[[Divine]] Spell, Warding''

'''APC:''' 4

'''SPC:''' 30

'''Range:''' 40 ft

'''Requirements:''' Verbal, Visual, Gesture

'''Duration:''' up to 10 minutes

Choose one creature when you cast this spell. That creature becomes encased in twinkling starlight. For the duration, they gain the following benefits:

• They shed dim light in a 10 ft radius

• All of their defenses increase by +2

• They gain Resist 5 against Radiant, Necrotic, and nonmagical Blunt and Sharp [[damage]]

If you are outdoors and stars are currently visible in the sky, then the target of the spell also deals +2 damage on all of their attacks, and their weapon attacks deal radiant damage for the duration.

These effects last until the end of your next turn, but you may spend 1 AP on your next turn to extend the duration until the end of your subsequent turn, to a maximum of 10 minutes.

[[Divine Spells|[Back to Divine Magic]]]

Occult

2024-01-15T22:59:35Z

Self-Help: Minor spacing change

Through fell ritual and careful experimentation, occult casters can augment their Essence by pulling Essence directly from planar entities. This is dangerous - if these entities become aware of the theft, they can be powerful enemies - but if they do not notice, the power becomes the cultist’s to do with as they see fit. This augmentation of one’s Essence through tapping into the Essence of others is the heart of the Occult Source.

=== The Toll of Occultism ===
The draw of occultism is great: by manipulating one’s own essence, one’s own soul, a caster is beholden to nobody but themself. But this extreme individualism comes with dire threat: it is easy to overreach. A caster might lose themself to dark rituals, so focused on altering their soul that they become unrecognizable to who they were before they made such augmentations.

Alternatively, one might draw so much power from a powerful planar entity that the entity becomes aware of the attempts to siphon power. Generally, these powerful beings will not retaliate beyond causing a spell, ritual, or chant to backfire, but occasionally a being of great power might hold a grudge against the caster or try to force the caster into their service.

=== Occultism and Personality ===
As an occult caster draws more and more power into themselves and alters their own soul with ever greater abandon, they might undergo profound personality changes. In all but the rarest of cases, these personality changes are a negative transformation. Whatever a caster’s greatest vice prior to dabbling in occultism, it is likely to get accentuated. Power-hungry casters grow lustful for absolute power. Greedy casters become miserly copper-pinchers. Gluttonous casters might become wildly and destructively hedonistic.

Casters that stay in touch with their positive emotions can stave off the worst of these changes. Keeping a strong circle of friends around you and pursuing a wide variety of wholesome activities makes you less susceptible to the corrupting nature of occult magic.

=== Relationship With Divinity ===
Occult casters often steal power from [[divine]] beings, but do not confuse this with divine magic. While divine casters enter into carefully negotiated contracts with their patron deities, or they are rewarded for devout worship with magical favors, occult casters have no form of covenant with the deities from whom they draw power. A divine caster might find it challenging to draw power from multiple gods if the gods don’t get along with one another, but an occult caster has no such inhibitions, as the gods themselves are often unaware of the slivers of power that the occultist steals.

=== Occult Magic Types ===
In addition to spells, occult casters might learn chants or rituals.

'''Chant.''' Chants cost no SP and you can use them as many times as you wish.

'''Ritual.''' Rituals take quite a long time to cast, and each ritual will specify how frequently you can cast it.

=== Occult Tags ===
These tags are referenced by some occult magical abilities.

==== Occult Power ====
Occult power is the total number of talent points you have spent on occult talents as a result of leveling up, in addition to the number of talent points you have spent in certain classes or stacks. These classes or stacks will specify that they contribute to Occult Power.

==== Curse and Charm ====
Curse and Charm are tags that denote an effect that lingers with its target for the magic’s duration, even if an effect would normally dispel or suppress magic.

==== Incantation ====
If a spell has the Incantation tag, the spell’s effects can be extended if you spend a smaller amount of AP on subsequent rounds, but these spells still have a maximum duration. If you neglect to spend the required Incantation AP at any point on subsequent turns, then the spell ends; you must spend SP again to recast the spell if you wish to renew the effects.

This might look like: ''Incantation (1 AP; max 10 minutes)'' - this means that after you initially cast the spell, you must spend 1 AP on your next turn if you want to keep the spell going. If you keep the spell going for 10 minutes, then it expires at that point.

==== Ritualize ====
This tag means that the spell can be cast as a ritual, which does not expend SP. Each spell with an incantation tag will specify how many times it can be used as a ritual, and when you regain the ability to do so.

==== Dark Power ====
Dark Power is a tag attached to certain chants, rituals, and spells. These magical abilities come with a risk of being temporarily or permanently altered or corrupted in some way, specified within each ability.

Skill Challenges

2024-01-06T15:26:03Z

Self-Help: Just corrected some minor spelling changes - "ease" to "easy" in the difficulty chart; "bandets" to "bandits" in the Example Skill Challenges area, and "Wildernes" to "Wilderness" in the same section.

=== Skill Challenges ===
When one of your players attempts something that has a chance of failure, ask them for an Attribute check to determine their level of success.

Ask for one of seven Attribute checks: STR, DEX, END, AWR, INT, CHA, or LUCK. These correspond to the seven [[Attributes]] of the same name (note that there are not COR checks).

To make a skill check, your player will roll 1d20 and add their Attribute points from the relevant Attribute.

Encourage players to mention if they have a relevant skill. This would allow them to make their check with an added bonus.

For example, assume that Marcus is level 1. If the MC asks Marcus to make a Charisma roll to convince a local official to offer aid, then Marcus would roll 1d20 + his CHA, or 1d20+2. However, Marcus also has +3 in the Persuading skill, so he could remind the MC of this and make the roll at +5 instead: +2 from his Charisma, and +3 from his Persuading bonus.

Players can use Attribute checks and [[skills]] to attempt all manner of [[actions]], from spreading rumors in a tavern to sneaking through a dungeon to foraging for food in the woods.

==== Setting Difficulty ====
As an MC, when you consider how difficult an Attribute should be, use these [[Guiding Principles|guiding principles]] and adopt them to the specific circumstance in question.

==== Tiered Success ====
It is narratively rewarding to set up an Attribute Check with different tiers of success. Using the above example, if Marcus is attempting to persuade a local official to lend aid to the party, then perhaps there are four possible outcomes, depending on how high Marcus rolls:

1. The official might ignore Marcus and refuse even basic help (outright failure).

2. Perhaps, the official will listen to the heroes and then redirect them: “Not my problem; go talk to the sheriff.” This would be considered a failure in that the official did not lend aid, but not a complete failure; the official offered a lead for the party to pursue.

3. With a more positive outcome, the official might lend financial aid.

4. The official might even give the heroes a formal writ that lets them act with the official’s legal blessing, giving them more access throughout the city.

==== Failing Forward ====
When designing a skill check, it is important to keep in mind that even failure should lead to progression in the story. For example, if characters are trying to sneak into an enemy stronghold, then failure might lead to [[combat]]; this still moves the story forward in a meaningful way.

Conversely, if characters must find a secret room in an old manor, and they all fail on their AWR checks to do so, it could grind the story to a halt. In [[order]] to prevent this, make sure that every outright failure leads to another potential course of action. Failing their AWR checks might mean that the characters DO still find the secret room, but it takes them so long that the manor’s cultist inhabitants return home and confront them… or perhaps a rival explorer finds a different way into the secret room first and steals the artifact the heroes were looking for.

There will, of course, be the rare instance in which failure is just failure - provided that it does not lead to an outright dead end in the story’s progression. In the example of the manor’s hidden room, perhaps the heroes are investigating a larger mystery throughout the town. Just because they can’t find a hidden room in the manor does not mean that they can’t keep pursuing other leads.

=== Difficulty Rating ===
Here are some guidelines that you can use when determining the difficulty rating of a skill check. You can use these guidelines to set different tiers of success; for example, outright failure might be a roll of 5 or less; failure with some consolation might be a roll of 6-9; success, a roll of 10- 15; and fantastic success with a best-case-scenario outcome if you roll 16 or higher. These numbers should change dramatically based on the difficulty of the task undertaken

Remember that skill checks should only be made if there is a chance of failure. Finding food in an in-season orchard, for example, is a given and should not require a skill check.

Note that adventurers can gain up to a +12 in an Attribute (though they cannot get a +12 before level 21 due to the restrictions in how quickly you can gain Attribute points), and can get up to a +20 in a Skill if they focus on really becoming an expert in it.

This means that by level 21, a character might have a +32 in a Specialized Skill, meaning that a high-level expert could automatically succeed a very hard check, but would need to roll a 15 or higher on a near-impossible check.
{| class="wikitable"
|+
!Difficulty
!Rating
!Example
|-
|Very easy
|5
|Swimming across a narrow lake without much current.
|-
|easy
|8
|Sneaking past guards that have fallen asleep
|-
|Intermediate
|12
|Climing a vertical cliff with rough edges, offering resonable handholds
|-
|Difficult
|17
|Persuading a political enemy tol team up for a shared goal
|-
|Hard
|23
|Determing cause of death on a very mangled corpse
|-
|Very Hard
|30
|Spotting an invisible Enemy
|-
|Strenuous
|38
|Pushing a large boulder up a hill
|-
|NearImpossible
|47
|Outwitting an archfiend
|}

=== Example Skill Challenges ===
Here are a couple situations where you might ask your party to make some skill checks. The Difficulties in these examples assume a party of four Adventurers that are all level 3 or lower.

==== Rumors of bandits ====
The heroes have heard that there is a roving pack of bandits in the area, so they take it upon themselves to investigate. In order to quickly find the [[bandit]] group, the adventurers need to ask traveling merchants and local farmers and hunters if they’ve gotten word of the bandits or seen anything suspicious of late.

The adventurers can make CHA or INT checks to gain more information on them. If the heroes have the relevant Skills, they might want to add their Eavesdropping, Gossipping, Intimidating, Persuading, or Savoir Faire bonuses.

Each PC can make a check. They gain Successes based on the table below

If the heroes collectively get fewer than 4 Successes, then when they find the group of bandits, the bandits have had time to recruit more members. Add 2 additional bandits to the encounter

Conversely, if the adventurers collectively get more than 6 successes, then when they find the bandit group, run the battle with one fewer bandit as the group has realized that they are being investigated and one of their less committed members decided to abandon them

==== Wilderness Survival ====
When the heroes try to camp, they can roll AWR checks to try to make camp. They might add Foraging or Sheltering bonuses.

Each PC can make a check, gaining “Successes” based on the table below.

If the adventurers collectively get fewer than 5 Successes, then they each start the following day by subtracting 1d4 from their current HP (representing a malnourished and uncomfortable night of sleep).
{| class="wikitable"
!Skill Roll
!Successes
|-
|Less then 5
| -1
|-
|5-8
|0
|-
|9-13
| +1
|-
|14-17
| +2
|-
|18-20
| +3
|-
|21 or more
| +4
|}