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The original timeline was written by the Council of Wizardry. It is also very humancentric.
Their history only goes back so far…basically in that part of Astlan Wizardry was lost for a long time and had to be rediscovered/reinvented. So the vast majority of their spells have been developed since the time of the Anilords. Some has been imported.
But there are other groups of wizards, with different spells that do similar things. Think Western medicine vs Chinese medicine, etc. The laws of Wizardry are what they are, like the principles of Physics and Engineering, it’s just a matter of learning the rules and utilizing them, so it’s like different groups discovering the principles of Engineering at different times.
On the other hand animages are simply natural talents/disciplines that harness animus and mana without a preset patterns/engineering. So there were wizards summoning demons in Astlan, thousands of years ago…just not so much in that part of Norelon within the time that Orcus has been gone.
What I can say about animage summonings? Because of the risks, they were generally lower demons, and a lot more bargaining was going on. Think Faustian deals and such.
And of course, priests and shamans and druids could also do it, in most of those cases though there are motivational difficulties in why would they want to? However, the hermetic druids would have rituals very similar to a priest or wizard to contain demons. And shamanistic druids/shamans would have had some as well.
Yeah, thread is really out of date.
OOA:ITN was supposed to beta this month….work has just exploded like crazy…so now beta is late October. Which isn’t that bad for me because I really hated that Jan 1 release for Book III, all sorts of problems with Amazon employees being off for the holidays and unable to get help with kindle issues etc.
Also, a lot of readers follow the school year cycle, either grade school or college, particularly college it seams. So I can see that sales strongly correlate to non-vacation times…I even see spikes right after finals etc. So Jan 1 is end of a holiday start of school year, and so bad timing, shifting just a couple weeks really helps.
And that sort of schedule, actually, applies to work people too. Jan 2nd is “back to work after holiday fun, time to get serious” so you have a week or two lull, until people are back into their routines.
There really are seasonal affects, it’s really quite interesting to observe.
Once OOA:ITN is off to editor, I resume on Book IV, then after that is COA:ITW after Book IV goes to editor.
Teleportation works fine in the Abyss, it doesn’t actually rely on the astral plane.
Now, not all localverses have physics for teleportation, and some that do are problematic because of their topology, although that’s something one can figure out with enough time and effort and is only a problem for extraplaner people.
Boom Gates are related to “Star Gates” in that they are limited to the localverse. They are mini-wormhole type things and are again different from teleportation.
The Abyss and the Astral planes are pretty unique planes, and they definitely do touch, so things that use the Astral plane will work in the Abyss, it’s just teleportation doesn’t need it.
Where some confusion can lie is with the ethereal planes.
Ethereal planes are attached to and unique to localverses. Each localverse (or most of them) has its own ethereal plane. You can’t get to another localverse using the ethereal plane of your current localverse, it doesn’t touch those, anymore than your material plane does.
Now, this all being said, there will be a LOT more discussion and use of this in OOA:ITN. The Shamans (Trig, Thargus, Fluegel, Ismelka and others) make heavy use of both the ethereal and astral planes as part of their jobs.
The Abyss, does NOT have an ethereal plane, in the Abyss, they are sort of merged together as both “spirits” and “material bodies” can both exist in the Abyss at the same time and place. Purgatory and Limbo are similar but sort of reversed in terms of spirit/material balance.
No, I think the commas must be in the wrong place.
The Abyss is not at all like a localverse, the Boom Gates are limited to the Abyss, the same way the Star Gates are limited to a localverse.
I am just saying that the Boom Gates can’t be used for Demons “to escape” to the outside, to any localverse.
The existence of such devices would scare the crap out of wizards everywhere.
And, of course, even if they could be used as exits, I couldn’t say that because of the mass panic that would ensue.
The Abyss is completely unique, there is only one, it is infinite and has a lot of other “odd” properties, such as mutable physics. E.g. both magic and technology of most all localverses works fine there, at least within the limits of practicality.
And by which, I mean there are some magics and technologies that do not work there due to the other unique properties. E.g. anything dealing with the ethereal plane doesn’t work, magically or technologically, because there is no ethereal plane.
Well, they were brothers in law and “might be a spoiler/maybe you didn’t catch it” …
[Spoiler]
…they did conspire to capture and lock up their shared parents together.And they were hiding this from other deities. Everyone thinks Aetherus and Eris just headed for the hills and disappeared…but nope they are sleeping and having unpleasant dreams.
[/spoiler]You definitely have to do some adding and subtracting during the game.
I think one other piece to mention, is that the game basically requires you to use miniatures or something for place markers in close combat.
This is because “where you are” relative to who you are attacking matters.
For example, if you are planning to do a ranged attack (archer, wizard, etc) and your target is surrounded by your fellow adventurers, or even other enemies, you have to be careful or you could hit them instead.
And did I mention that lightning bolts are “hot” and that shooting a say, 2 foot wide bolt of lightning between the heads of your two best friends, who are beside each other in the 10 foot wide tunnel, and are between you and the target and are chopping at your target with swords, can leave burn marks on their ears?
Actually, this last one is solely GM’s discretion, there is no official rule for it, but that is something you can easily see with the miniatures.
On the other hand, you certainly can accidentally overshoot or undershoot your target and hit someone else. That is in the rules.
Also, that thief needs to get behind the target, secretly, and we need to see that with miniatures, before he can backstab someone with a dagger.
You know, I don’t actually remember, I am sure I did him, but probably like Lenamare as a regular character on paper, so I don’t have it on computer.
I will need to go back through my paper stuff to look.
He is very high level, most likely the highest level in Astlan, higher than the other Knights Rampant, but he also has Ruidan and some seriously “god-awe-full” armor, and he had the help of all those priests draining Tom and suppressing him.
And Tom, while high level, was inexperienced. This is actually something you see a LOT in D&D when you see people start a character at high level, or are just given one. They are never as effective with a character of that power as a player that has played the character from level 1 to XX, the player who has lived through all the XP, has figured out (presumably) how to truly exploit their character’s strengths and minimize their weaknesses.
I believe he is in the low 30’s.
So, in that sense, of Tom being inexperienced but high level…that is probably the closet the books come to LitRPG in reality because that was the paradigm I had in mind with Tom. A student driver in a Formula 1 race car.
I was actually thinking about that at the gym yesterday.
Divine Ascension was always an “iffy” thing in D&D, starting with “Gods, Demigods and Heroes” which basically sent Monty (sic) Haul players into over drive.
Of course, no player of mine, ever accused me of running Monty Haul dungeons, far from it. However, I enjoyed dragging my own favorite characters into dungeons operated by such DM’s, and even got one Divine Ascensed. And, let’s just say it got crazy.
So that is definitely problematic for any game.
However, one expansion module I thought of for a new release would be The Abyssal Adventures Handbook.
In this version, players can create newly enslaved demon characters, enslaved to an NPC wizard (the GM of course) who would send the newbie demon on quests and tasks. Now, obviously where the cheating comes in is the die roll that determines what level you show up at.
I am thinking, no one comes in higher than a Fiend, and most likely you start as a Sprite or Imp, or maybe a Shadow for very skilled players.
Even so, an imp or sprite would be higher level than a normal 1st level character, and a fiend would start even higher. Actually, I have the levels written down somewhere. It’s in the “Monster Manual” section. Have to dig that up.
OMG: I just found my random demon creation tables! I forgot I even have those, these would be perfect for creating the appearance of a demon character. There are die roll tables for shape, color, horns, wings, skin, mouth/teeth, ears, nose everything.
Then there is the demonic offspring table. I do remember that one.
EEK: Just found Tom’s character sheet! He was never actually played as a character, we never got anyone high enough level to not be squashed by him.
[quote=Gelcube;8050]Tom has laser eyes? Did I miss that in the books!?[/quote]
Heh heh, I know!
No, he’s never used them, I am very sure I completely forgot about them.
Given the timing, I am guessing this game example was written around the same time, or shortly before Heron of Triage lifted off the ground with his airships from Oorstemoth.
I am guessing I had it planned or something. This was all a VERY long time ago.
[quote=Lunarmage;8051]Author Guy, now you are just teasing us. [/quote]
That would be Tizzy teasing….
However, this really exists.
Somewhere, I have Lenamare as well. Just not sure where. I think it’s on paper rather than computer, in which case it’s buried in a closet.
The Tom character was done for an example of extreme demon creation/possibilities, there are several smaller demons I’ve done as well.
Lenamare would have been done as practice in how to create a high level wizard, and I’d have done it for myself as a beta test exercise for the game.
It was very tedious to figure out all of his skills and spells etc.
It’s actually above.
It was formatted in an ancient word processing program, because it was in the manual, so I pasted a pure text version a couple posts back.
It’s an Animus character so that stats are different than D&D, etc.
As an FYI, stats start at D&D levels and can just keep going up, there isn’t the sort of exponential curve that happens in D&D once you get past 18, where suddenly you can’t compare the strength of Hercules to the strength of Atlas because the scale 19->25 is too small.
Combat is all D100, and there are modifiers for attacker AF, defender DF and magic weapons, and spells.
In terms of his crazy mana. The base version of a spell costs the square of the level of the spell and then there are modifiers to the cost based on extending the range, area of affect and damage.
E.g. by default a 3rd level Lightning bolt always does 3D6 damage up to some range for 9 mana points However, higher level characters can increase the range or the number of dice of damage by expending more mana.
High level Fireballs could get very expensive in that you have range, area of affect and damage to expand by spending mana (caster’s choice which, if not all, and how much, they want to do). So for example: a 30th level Wizard doesn’t have to do 30D6 worth of damage when the basic 3D6 is sufficient.
Which was the case in ADD 1.0, but limited in later versions. Here, it’s up to the caster and how much mana they want to spend. Maybe they want to completely vaporize the Giant Rat and give everyone else in the vicinity a new hair do, due to static electricity.
You know Tizzy would never allow ANY wizard or group of wizards to buy anything he’s associated with?
Pretty sure all the other demons would object as well.
Even Lenamare and the CoW might object, since WotC is clearly a rival group of wizards.
In Original D&D, Basic D&D and ADD 1/2 and I thought 3, have a maximum ability score of 18 for most normal characters/beings, and a minimum of 3.
However, when talking about immortals (and demons) that scale is raised to a 25 max in ADD v1 (Actually, I think it was also 25 in Gods, Demigods & Heroes the 4th digest of the Original D&D, but I’d have to look, it’s only minorly buried)
This means that things start to get rather skewed for high abilities as there really isn’t much range, presumably if you can lift a boulder the size of a small mountain, you can also lift an entire planet….point being it wasn’t very exact. (Hercules tosses giant boulders and Atlas lifts a planet on his back).
Caveat, I haven’t actually played using 3. I hated 2 so much, I stuck with 1.
Here is a quick excerpt on the Melee Attack Procedure (this is just one small part of combat, a single action–how actions line up is another section and depends on the COORD of the involved parties (COORD is average DEX & AGIL)
[quote]
Melee Attack Procedure1) Roll % dice (1-100).
a) If a result of 98-00 (modified by certain skills) occurs, roll the damage for your weapon and go to the weapon’s critical table. Roll % dice again for the result of the critical.
b) If a result of 01-03 occurs, to directly to the fumble table and roll % dice again for the result.
2) If there is no critical and no fumble, add the attacker’s AF to the roll. Also add any SLB the attacker is applying to the attack.
3) Subtract the defender’s DF from the roll. Also subtract any SLB the defender is using for his or her defense.
4) If the target of the attack is using an action to parry, subtract the defender’s AF (and, naturally, SLB) from the roll. Using a staff or nunchaku to parry subtracts another 20%. The target will naturally use all of his or her SLB for defense.
5) Look up the result on the Attack Result Table. If a clean miss occurs, you are done. Otherwise, continue.
6) The attacker rolls the damage inflicted by his or her weapon.
7) If a shield-side hit resulted and the character hit has a shield, he or she subtracts the shield’s AP from the damage inflicted.
8) If the shield does not stop all the damage, or if the character has no shield, then the character hit subtracts the AP his or her armor stops.
9) Any remaining damage is inflicted on the character, which must be subtracted from the character’s remaining DT.
Attack Results Table
Roll Result
195-199 Attack does +20 DT, bypasses 6 AP
190-194 +19 DT, bypasses 6 AP
185-189 +18 DT, bypasses 6 AP
180-184 +17 DT, bypasses 6 AP
175-179 +16 DT, bypasses 6 AP
170-174 +15 DT, bypasses 6 AP
165-169 +14 DT, bypasses 6 AP
160-164 +13 DT, bypasses 6 AP
155-159 +12 DT, bypasses 6 AP
150-154 +11 DT, bypasses 6 AP
145-149 +10 DT, bypasses 6 AP
140-144 +9 DT, bypasses 6 AP
135-139 +8 DT, bypasses 6 AP
130-134 +7 DT, bypasses 6 AP
125-129 +6 DT, bypasses 6 AP
120-124 +5 DT, bypasses 6 AP
115-119 +4 DT, bypasses 6 AP
110-114 +3 DT, bypasses 6 AP
105-109 +2 DT, bypasses 6 AP
100-104 +1 DT, bypasses 6 AP
95-99 Attack bypasses 6 AP, shield ineffective
90-94 Attack bypasses 5 AP, shield ineffective
85-89 Attack bypasses 4 AP, shield ineffective
80-84 Attack bypasses 3 AP, shield ineffective
75-79 Attack bypasses 2 AP, shield ineffective
70-74 Attack bypasses 1 AP, shield ineffective
60-69 Weapon-side hit, shield ineffective
40-59 Shield-side hit, shield stops rated AP
-39 Clean miss[/quote]
As stated there are then Critical Hit and Critical fumble tables that depend on the weapon type. Crush, Slice, Impale, Chop and of course FUMBLE!
And depending on what you are doing there are other tables, say for martial arts: Disarm, Grappling, Pins, Locks, Throws, Chokes.
There also Call Shots (e.g. I am calling a shot to the head) which are much more difficult depending on the body part, but which have more specific results….
Here is an example of the Crush Critical Hit.
[quote]
Critical Results TablesModifications: -3 per AP of armor protection
Crush Critical
Roll Critical Result
96+ Skull smashed: + 4d10 DT damage
86-95 Ribcage crushed: +3d10 DT damage
71-85 Hip shattered: +2d10 DT damage, -10 MV
56-70 Knee destroyed: +d12 DT damage, -6 MV
41-55 Face shot, nose broken: +d8 DT damage
21-40 Shoulder bruise: +d6 DT damage, -20 AF for 2 rounds
up to 20 Elbow stung: +d4 DT damage, -20 AF for 2 rounds[/quote]
I should note
DT are Hit Points
AP are Armor Points (the amount of damage your armor, or hide, or magic dohicky subtracts)
MV is Movement (speed)
AF is Attack Factor
DF is Defense Factor
SLB is Skill Level BonusAs a rule, for your normal weapons/attacks, you will have all of the numbers crunched before combat starts, so it’s a total add and subtract sort of thing based on the the opponents.
As I’ve noted, it’s a rather complex game.
Our slogan was:
[b]Animus, the RPG you’ve been training your whole life for![/b]
