Requiem/AproposOfNothing

So I thought I'd write some stuff about an Idea I had, basically 'let's build a magic system from the metaphysics up rather than the rules down'. It is entirely unclear whether this is a tabletop or a larp idea, but I'm sticking a larp-aimed version here.

The setting is obviously called Aon, thinking about it. That can also be the name for the world.

Metaphysics

• For each action, a reaction. For everything gained, something is lost. If you know how to pay the price, you can purchase untold power. This is trivially observable in everyday life - work hard to build a house, and you get a house. Chop and burn firewood, and you get a fire. This principle can be extended.
• All beings are capable of what an unschooled person or outsider might consider 'magic'.
• The class of magic available to mortals is the greatest and purest - the direct manipulation of cause and effect to wield the raw energies of creation. Mankind truly is in the image of the Great Maker.
  • But the Great Maker is gone. The price for the making of the universe was the unmaking of the Great Maker. We know He is gone, but we know of Him by the account He wrote upon the Field of Remembrance, the letters carved a foot deep into solid basalt.
    • And so the name of each leader or hero is written upon that Field when they die. The writing is beginning to become cramped.
  • Wielding the natural magic of mankind is known as 'following the left-handed path'. More on that later. Left-handed magic is extremely personally demanding and requires great sacrifices of the would-be magician.
    • The power can be wielded directly - the price for its use being immediate and debilitating, the price for knowing how to use it being insidious and permanent. Scarification, self-mutilation, amnesia, sacrifice. A left-handed archmage dies young, yes, but his enemies tend to die younger. Walking all the way along the path, one even begins to sacrifice one's ability to work the less self-destructive magics.
    • The power can be wielded indirectly - this is safer but still self-destructive. Combat drugs, ecstatic trances, berserk rage, ascetic self-denial.
• This is not the only way for a mortal to wield power, for there are other beings in the universe that crave things a mortal can (if they wish, if they dare) provide. They are immaterial and lack physical form, but they have their own magic and are often only to keen to exercise it at the behest of a right-hand wizard. The summoning and binding of demons and such beings has always been frowned upon by the religions, and in many lands few are willing to anger the priests - but in the universities of some of the more enlightened nations the operation of divine magic has been posited to be identical to that of the right-hand path.
  • The simplest thing is notice and consideration. For a correctly worded summoning most entities will make their presence felt such that they can at least be further bargained with. Elementals, ghosts, imps and the like tend to be so pleased at the sacrifice of time on their behalf that they will of course exercise their power in return. The minor miracles of faith require only that one know the exact forms of prayer and scrupulously observe them.
  • Greater beings require greater consideration. The observance of a ban, or stricture upon the practitioner's behaviour, requires that the practitioner constantly remember the being in whose honour they do this - suitable compensation for the exercise of power. Zealous observance of religious strictures, combined with sufficient purity of thought, allows for the working of true power in the name of one's deity.
    • It is possible, of course, to go further than merely doing small things on the one hand and restricting one's behaviour on the other. The mortal soul is a valuable bargaining piece, and by making a true alliance with a friendly extraplanar being (or some Faustian bargain with a hell-spawned demon) one can negotiate for great power indeed. There is a little of the merchant in all right-handed archmages, as they try with every bargain to get more for this or that piece of their soul than it is worth.
    • The gods occasionally go further than merely providing power for their favoured servants. They will allow them some fragment of their final elevation before time, granting them high rank among their followers as a reward for extreme purity of thought and action.
  • And just as with the left-hand path, there is direct and indirect power. One can have one's servants / allies / master work magic on one's behalf - or one can allow them into one's body. Possession, whether the partial binding of an earth-spirit into one's skin or the permanent merging of one's body with the emanation of an archangel, can grant easy and immediate power. The risks to one's long-term health and sanity are, of course, commensurate with the reward.
• Mortals are weak and frail. The pinnacle of highly-trained mortal skill is easy for magic to equal and easy for it to supercede.

Setting

• Have you read CJ Carella's Armageddon, the tabletop roleplaying game? Like that, but set in some kind of fantasy world.
  • To elaborate. The mortal world is being invaded by squamous beasties from beyond. Mortal nations have laid aside their problems and marched against the foe - and in general been easily defeated. There have been some successes, there have been some temporary reverses, but on the whole the world is falling to pieces and everything is going to hell.
• The senior practitioners of supernatural power, the holy sites and ancient monasteries were the first to be hit. Most of the wizards and priests died without being able to bring their power to bear. Many of the greatest practitioners of left-handed styles gave their lives so their students could escape.
  • A retreat was made to a fortified town that was once the state religion's chief magical prison and the vault where the forbidden knowledge was kept. The call went out to all those who would hear - that here a Stand was being made. It is the last supernatural bastion still standing. And if the siege can be lifted - then it is from here that we will strike back.
• The inhabitants of the prison were heretics, blasphemers, witches, subversives, cultists, wanton killers and all manner of undesirables. All they have in common is that they have access to some (or, indeed, to many) supernatural powers. Their guards are priests chosen first for their purity of thought and action and second for their facility with miracles that subdue and dispel. There is also a significant contingent of mundane soldiers, townsfolk and refugees - and volunteers have been called for to take up the forbidden arts in defence of the world.
  • So our characters are either (a) inhabitants of a prison for supernatural undesirables, (b) priestly guards at said prison, (c) mundanes who are drugged to the eyeballs or possessed by extraplanar spirits, (d) lonely fleeing representatives of once-mighty organisations.
  • It's lucky, really, that there are short and easy paths to power.

An Attempt At A New XP System

• A character has a given, set number of skill slots - 5 or 7.
  • They can change skills around from week to week, within certain limits.
  • Some skills have prerequisites - these prerequisites come in various types.
    • Prereq skills - the magics are basically in trees. Once you have had a skill for a week you can remove the prerequisite, but then it will be harder to get back into the tree if you leave.
    • Costs - when you take this skill something bad happens to you. You cannot unpay these costs. If the bad thing would have no effect it still counts as paid. Examples - "you forget your childhood" as a buy-in for left-handed magic, "you are addicted to combat drugs" as a buy-in for drug based combat skills.
    • Strictures - for as long as you have this skill you must do / refrain from doing something. If you break the stricture then you lose all access to this skill and all that depend on it. I'm thinking of three tiers of these - first tier being something trivial, like not wearing yellow; next tier being something inconvenient, like not lying; third tier being something really awkward, like not raising your voice except in praise of the demon Ashtoreth. Strictures are self-refereed - the idea is that these are not a balancing factor, they are added coolness. Yes, if you drop a skill with a stricture you drop the stricture too. Abbots regularly drink themselves sick while novices are forbidden any intoxicant.
    • Time - you must have held a certain skill for N interactives in order to buy this skill. The idea is to both allow quick and fluid multiclassing and reward specialisation.
    • Restrictions - some skills preclude other skills.
  • Skill slots can be empty. In empty slots go things like "Callow Youth" or "Raving Loony" or the like - basically background skills that fall away as you become a hero. These could even be rewarded by having skills that depended on things like 'Must have had "Raving Loony" for three interactives', 'Must have "Callow Youth" to buy'.
• The division of skills into trees might look something like this.
  • Direct Left-hand Magic. All skills have costs, all skills have the base skill as a prerequisite, there are perhaps one or two pinnacle abilities, there are more abilities in the tree (well, bush) than a character has slots. Flavour is self-destruction, self-sacrifice, voodoo / witchcraft. The pinnacle abilities preclude right-hand magic. The biggest spells damage you to cast, or permanently reduce your hit points to learn. No limit on uses per day of these. Healing only by taking damage.
  • Indirect Left-hand Magic. Multiple buy-in skills each with a different cost or preclusion - Combat Drug Use (drug addiction bites), Berserk Rage (precludes some right-handed rites because you don't have the patience, and you will never quite be calm again), Ascetic Lifestyle (breaks some strictures, is its own stricture, probably has health implications) - and each with an overlapping but non-identical set of dependent skills. Basically this is a melee combat tree focusing on damage and activated abilities.
  • Direct Right-hand Magic. Massive whopping buy-in skill that can catapult you straight to the third tier of skills, but is the only right-handed skill with a cost - this is the 'sell your soul' one. Then you spend skill slots to be able to summon some number of first, second or third tier spirits per session, which come in different types each of which can do a small set of different things. Some of the skills preclude taking others, because some spirits won't work together. Healing without pain to the caster comes here.
  • Indirect Right-hand Magic. Buy-in skills each with a cost - once you've bought one of them you can't buy any of the others ever (because you've joined one or other supernatural 'team'). They should probably also stop you buying certain direct right-hand magic for the same reason. You then get a melee combat tree focusing on passive abilities, immunities and hit points.
  • Mortal Skills. A grab-bag of useful abilities - the ability to bandage wounds, wear small amounts of armour, have more body hits, wield longer weapons, use shields and the like. No damage increases though - SINGLE is the pinnacle of merely mortal strength.
• Armour comes in Partial (minimum: light armour jerkin) and Full (minimum: jerkin, head protection and vambraces). Without at least partial armour, you take mark (see below) as single. Full armour provides a little protection without supernatural enhancement. Supernatural enhancement >> mundane armour.

Thoughts on System

• There is a one second rule. You may not make more than one call a second with the exception of negate and resist.
• You have two hit point numbers to remember - armour and body hits; both are global. Armour is lost before hits. Armour can be repaired by removing, carefully inspecting and replacing the physrep where this is practical, or by a similar length of time roleplaying armour repair. Body hits represent luck, sheer toughness and slogging on in the face of minor injuries; when the last body hit is lost, taking damage to a limb will make you wounded, while taking damage to an already wounded limb or the torso or head will make you incapacitated.
  • Mundane mortals have 1 hit. Any armour stops you taking mark as single. Mundane full armour provides 1 armour hit. Mundane weapon skill calls single.
  • Supernatural power can push you as far as 4 body hits, 6 armour hits. PC available calls go as far as double, most calls doing zero or one body hits' damage. Boss monsters are probably going to be going as far as quad.
• The states one can be in are fine, shaken, wounded, incapacitated, dying and dead. Calling triage gets you one of these responses. Here follows an unnecessarily gritty injury system, mostly because I'm bored.
  • fine means you have taken no damage.
  • shaken means you have taken damage to your body hits. Roleplaying - adrenalin rush, minor injuries, shrugging it off, fine really. No minimum physrep. If you are shaken but have zero body hits, you may regain one body hit by resting.
  • wounded means you have taken body hit damage and an injury that will become serious if untreated. Will become incapacitated when you next rest, or after five minutes out of combat (not causing the loss of any remaining body hits). Roleplaying - deep wound to arm or leg, arrow in the gut, etc.
  • incapacitated means you probably have no remaining body hits and have sustained at least one mortal wound. The mechanical and RP effects of incapacitation on locations are as follows. Will become dying when you next rest, or after five minutes out of combat, or if you take further damage that would at least wound you.
    • Arm: You may use that limb to make or parry one blow. Doing so will cause you to become incapacitated to the torso immediately. Taking another blow to the arm will sever it and cause you to become incapacitated to the torso immediately. RP: Your arm is broken or otherwise maimed. It is possible to grit your teeth and carry on, *just*. You know your injuries are life-threatening.
    • Leg: You may walk if one leg is incapacitated, but at a severe limp. You may run, once, up to ten steps, on an incapacitated leg, after which you will pass out as per making a blow with an injured arm. If both your legs are incapacitated you cannot stand, let alone walk. RP: Much as per arm.
    • Torso: You may not fight or activate abilities. You are conscious and may communicate. RP: You are mortally wounded and conscious, make your own conclusions. You don't have to scream if you don't want to, too much screaming is bad for people's ears.
    • Head: You are unconscious. RP: Yeah, what that said.
  • dying means you are mortally wounded and unconscious. If you take injuries that would at least wound you, you will die. If you do not receive medical attention within a suitable time frame (five minutes), you will die.
  • dead means you are beyond help. No resurrection. If you have sold your soul it goes to the entity that bought it. Otherwise, nobody knows.
• Activated abilities come in per-encounter, per-day and at-will.
  • Per-encounter abilities are regenerated by stopping and resting for five minutes; while resting you can talk and walk but running, fighting or any system call will interrupt your rest.
  • Per-day abilities are regenerated by performing the required rites, chiminage, sacrifices and bindings, a task that takes an hour's solid work and an assemblage of ritual paraphernalia, intoxicants etc; any disruption to these rites of longer than a minute means they must be started afresh.
  • At-will abilities may or may not have an immediate cost to them. Costs may include a temporary inability to call damage with a weapon, or to activate abilities; they may include taking a call oneself, or starting a death count without taking any visible damage.
• PC available combat calls.
  • mark is the default call. This means 'a blow, but not a solid one'. mark draws blood but causes no body hit damage and will not incapacitate a location even if the target has no body hits left.
  • single is available to all characters; probably requires training to do it with a polearm or ranged weapon.
  • through is available by all supernatural effects. It bypasses armour, causes a body hit of damage and causes you to become wounded.
  • double is available as an activated ability for left-hand indirect magic.
  • blast is available to direct magic. It causes a body hit of damage no matter your armour situation, causes a wound to the torso, and deals strikedown. Note that taking blast with no body hits remaining causes you to become incapacitated rather than wounded. Currently seeking a better name for "single through strikedown" than "blast".
  • cleave is available to indirect left-hand magic. It deals single and will incapacitate a limb if it deals body hit damage. cleave resistance is available to indirect right-hand.
  • disarm is available to direct magic. It deals no damage and causes the target to drop whatever they are holding.
  • repel is available to direct magic. It deals no damage and causes the target to retreat to 10 metres' distance for thirty seconds.
  • attract is available to all direct and right-hand indirect magic. It deals no damage and causes the target to advance to melee range for thirty seconds.
  • strikedown is available to all supernatural effects. It makes you fall over unless you are resistant to it.
  • triple and quad as in TT. They are available to direct left-hand magic.
  • flaming, freezing, shock, acid, shadow, holy are just words to put in front of your call to make it more impressive.
  • You can put mass at the front of your call to have it affect all within 5 metres of you within an arc of up to 180 degrees delineated by your spread arms. You get mass versions of everything but cleave and mark, although mass attract seems pretty silly to me.
• PC available non combat calls.
  • bandage is a mundane call and brings wounded up to shaken; it does not restore body hits.
  • treat is a mundane call. It cannot be used on a resisting target. It brings them to wounded and keeps them there as long as you roleplay treatment, but the moment your attention ceases (for example, by trying to bandage) the target goes to incapacitated. Only with an assistant capable of calling bandage can you bring an incapacitated or dying character back.
  • cure is a supernatural call. It cures one body hit and returns the target to shaken unless the target was dead.
  • heal is a supernatural call. It cures all body hits and returns the target to fine unless the target was dead.
• Non PC available calls.
  • crush is not available to PCs. It incapacitates the location struck regardless of the hit situation.
  • drop and slay as in TT.