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Entomancy magic path

Sun 02 Oct 2022, 08:42

Hi, I am a big fan of insect monsters in fantasy (i.e. Swarm that Walks from Pathfinder and Entoma from Overlord) so I've tried to create a magic path for the Sorcerer (thinking about switching to Druid, let me know) that's all about controlling these tiny creatures. This first draft will probably be not balanced so I'm open to ideas! I've even tried to insert a 4th rank spell since they are the pinnacle of the discipline in my opinion.
WARNING: If you are entomophobic (fear of insects) I advise against reading the path since it could disgust you due to its nature.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1hHy ... sp=sharing
 
JohanR
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Re: Entomancy magic path

Sun 02 Oct 2022, 15:03

Really cool, I like it.
As there are more paths for sorcerers, I would use it as "darker" path for a druid.

INFEST: tries to to do too much at the same time. I don't think PL at the same time should increase duration, lower chance to resist and increase consequences on failure.
THOUSAND EYES: Insects have poor eye sight at a distance though. I would word it differently. Like while in effect you are treated as in complete darkness, but are fully aware of the location of all creatures in the vicinity, as long as they are within short distance from an insect. You can spend actions to learn more details about a subject.
FEED MAGGOTS: Well it is kind of gross. But it also dosn't make sense. Like if you are willing to feed on maggots that has feed on corpses.. you might as well feed on the corpses themselves? at least if they are fresh? You also get "food" and not "meat" from the maggots, so you eat them raw and just store them crawling around in your backpack?
ELYTRA: I have a hard time seeing insects carry or fly away with a human, regardless of how many they are. The insects will not be able to help each other. It is like if would stack two helicopters on top of each other hoping that they could lift twice as much. What will happen is that the top helicopter will just push the lower helicopter into the ground, crashing it.
SCREECHING HUM: It is poor and few will use it, but there are other poor spells like this. Also, does the sound make you stressed, if so it is wits damage. If the sound is making you feel sick, it might be Agility damage, but I don't see INSIGHT as good in that case. ENDURANCE probably, maybe SLEIGHT OF HAND if you need to cover your ears quickly (id so perhaps at -2 if you don't want to drop hand held objects).
CREATE NEST: Perhaps you need to cast the spell again to have them not attack you, or you might need to pass an ANIMAL HANDLING roll. The nests are quite big if they use 1 food per day, that is around 5 times as much as a human. Perhaps 1 unit of vegetables per week, per size of the swarm, and you are only able to harvest them once per week. And perhaps no harvest when they are not feed.
SUMMON SWARM: A bit too powerful I think. An enemy will often at a minimum need to spend 4 actions to kill it, and by that time you will have summoned plenty more. No more than 1 strength per WP, I think. Perhaps reduce duration to 1 turn (15 minutes). A higher strength swarm can also become really dangerous, as that increases its damage. Maybe add something like, you may spend extra WP to make it poisonous. The swarm then gains 3 points of poison per WP.
CONSUME: Spells like these are a bit dangerous as you can freely PUSH a roll, then safe cast this spell for one round per PL gained from the pushed roll.. to be able to push rolls with almost no downsides. If it requires a corpse or food equal to the amount you heal, without gaining any ingredient PL, it would be more balanced I guess.
HIVE MIND: It needs more rules. How can I person be subject to fear when another is not? Perhaps share WITS/EMPATHY damage? What happens if one member is broken, do the others share the pain?
SWARM FORM: Add some more downsides. Like your armor rating becomes zero.
 
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Re: Entomancy magic path

Sun 02 Oct 2022, 17:33

Thanks for the input! I'll try to explain the spells and implement some changes if needed based on your suggestions.
INFEST: I wanted to recreate a spell similiar to this one https://pathfinderwrathoftherighteous.w ... arm+Infest. I would like to insert some form of malus for the enemy due to the insects crawling all over him, something less severe like losing only a fast action due to the itching?
THOUSAND EYES: Good point, by aware you mean just knowing creatures are present, and by concentrating trying to discern more in a bug-way(?).
FEED MAGGOTS: The idea is that the maggots eat the body (that you obviously couldn't eat) and by "processing" it with their digestive system gain nourishment from it, so once finished you can eat the edible Mealworm(it's a kind of worm that can be eaten raw even in the real world). Not an expert in the field but thought could be a good idea. The spell must be gross! :D
ELYTRA: For this one instead there isn't much realism as you pointed out, but since magic kinda breaks the laws of the world I guess insects could carry you? I'm more concerned about the fact that flying with a very high movement rate could be too strong despite the spell restrictions.
SCREECHING HUM: Straight up copied "Stun" from the Stonesinger but with Wits dmg instead of Agility.
CREATE NEST: Since you create the nest I can imagine that by the spell virtue you have a sort of link with your insects making them docile. I agree with harvesting once per week, it would be more in line with stronghold functions like the garden, but maybe in that case I should increase the drops? What about the locusts, do you find them balanced?
SUMMON SWARM: This one is very strong too, maybe it could be swapped with swarm form in terms of Spell Rank? Or maybe I could add a clause like "the insects are weak to fire and take full/double damage". The poison is a cool idea.
CONSUME: Got inspiration from "Blood bond" ; could nerf it by limiting to one attribute per corpse like you suggested though.
SWARM FORM: Added your idea to reduce armor to 0. Maybe i could add another weak point like full/double damage from fire? Even though I fell like a rank 4 spell (something you will probably have after months and months of sessions) should be this powerful considering it's the pinnacle of the discipline.

That's all!
 
JohanR
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Re: Entomancy magic path

Sun 02 Oct 2022, 22:13

INFEST: It is fine, just that i found it to get a bit too complicated. An alternative could be to treat it like being on fire? An example of that would be: The spell keeps inflicting one point of damage per round until the victim gets rid of them with a successful MOVE roll (slow action), with a negative modification equal to the Power Level. Armor does not protect against this spell. A target may also make an INSIGHT roll when first affected, with a negative modification equal to the Power Level. On a failure, they must try to get the locusts off themselves, otherwise they are not forced to make the MOVE rolls.
THOUSAND EYES: Well, perhaps.. just add some more fluff? I don't know.. it was just a suggestion.. I don't know if it was a good one. :P
FEED MAGGOTS: Like can you eat worms that has eaten humans, you might as well cannibalize on the human corpses I guess. They are often fresh, if you did the killing. But good for finding putrid corpses and poisonous corpses I guess. That it counts as food instead of meat also makes it interesting. Perhaps you can feed them meat as well as corpses. Turning meat into food, would really only be a good idea if you don't have a chef.
You could also, but I think maybe you should not (as it complicates things), is add that unless you know this spell, you need the COLD-BLOODED talent to not take a damage to Empathy while consuming the raw live corpse worms.
ELYTRA: It is way way overpowered, yeah. Rank 2 "Flight" makes you fly 1 round. Rank 2 "Deer's dash", increases your movement rate by PL for 1 action. I would remove the movement rate to begin with. Then make you perhaps able to hover one zone for a slow action, but taking any damage or not spending a slow action to remain hovering, would immediately make you fall.
SCREECHING HUM: Yeah, it is just a pretty weak base spell. Can be compared to "Horrify", 1 less rank, and no reducing roll. The only downside is that it cannot target multiple creatures, but the damage is split, and now all creatures can resist, so you kind of often do not want that anyway? But in a some rare niche situations, sure, it can perhaps be more useful.
CREATE NEST: It feels way too complicated for a spell. Do you need all the hive sizes? It can turn it into a minigame that only the spellcaster plays, it distracts. There are plenty of ways to solve it, but they may not fit your vision.
SUMMON SWARM: In the book of beasts, an insect swarm has this rule that reads kind of like this: a single attack against the insect swarm can never deal more than 1 point of damage. The only exception is attacks with fire and fire-based magic, which always inflict double damage on the insect swarm. So I think it fits to add this in here as well, for both spells. It still VERY powerful though, you might not just not cast it when your opponents are all equipped with fire based weapons, but those occasions would be rare. Giving it a starting strength of 2 would be balanced I think. It is dangerous then summons can outshine other party members on their own. It will then tank and distract for a few rounds and maybe even deal some damage. Another limit could be to limit this spell to one swarm, casting it again will disburse an other swarm you control. And/or perhaps the swarm is not controlled, and will attack the nearest creature, attacking your allies in the end, making you not want to summon to many of them.
CONSUME: Well "Blood bond" is powerful, but it at least requires a humanoid of your kin as a requirement. Since consume doesn't, you can always push all rolls, like "oh we need to climb a cliff", I'll push my roll. Lets say you take 2 damage to Agility. Then you just consume for 2 rounds, safecasting, with the two WP you gained from pushing and voila you have no damage, so pushing will become a standard tool outside of combat, like always push when you can..
SWARM FORM: You could add the fire penalty mentioned above. But it kind of depends on your world. Since rank 4 spells always would miscast and you would have a hard time to safe cast them, it is really not at all broken. But a mage that could safe cast it, like by having it in a grimoire, would be dangerous without it. The reduced armor rating to zero however compensates a lot, so it doesn't really need more. Swapping the ranks with "Summon swarm", makes less thematic sense, so therefor I wouldn't do it, as "Swarm form" has a more powerful feel to it. But even they are swapped, if a grimoire with safecasting becomes available, you will have an autowin button, with a rank 4 summon swarm, if you could spend every slow action summoning a powerful swarm for 1 WP.. well, you cannot avoid that it has a minimum of a 1/6 risk of miscast at rank 4, so that is at least something.
Last edited by JohanR on Mon 03 Oct 2022, 00:00, edited 2 times in total.
 
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Widowmemer
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Re: Entomancy magic path

Sun 02 Oct 2022, 22:41

Thanks again for the inputs! I'll continue working on it. One issue that a friend of mine pointed out is that the path could be too similiar to Metamorphosis magic and could simply be a branch of it. Do you have any ideas to make the magic fell unique and special? For example Symbolism uses carvings to empower the spells and ice magic uses, you guess, ice, making them their own unique disciplines.
 
JohanR
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Re: Entomancy magic path

Mon 03 Oct 2022, 00:29

Nothing that pops into mind.
I do think that it relating it to insects instead of animals are good enough of a change to not be like Shifting shapes.
The spells would be different enough too.

It could have interesting interactions with other groups. Like the the Order of Egression, they worship a version of the Nightwalker, but thinks of Wyrm as "Eating wyrm", "as symbolized by the maggots that eat the flesh of the dead". Source. So they may primarily worship this part of wyrm? Since Wym was stronger in Alderland, these druids could have originated there? Perhaps started by some frailers, in some kind of response to the probably too "civilized" ways over there? Just throwing out ideas.
 
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Re: Entomancy magic path

Mon 03 Oct 2022, 10:38

Very interesting order lore-wise, maybe these druid could be a part of it(or not), helping the sorcerers in getting rid of the bodies, letting them return to nature and be the insects food in a sense. The variety of orders and sub-religions in the game never ceases to amaze me!
 
JohanR
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Re: Entomancy magic path

Mon 03 Oct 2022, 23:34

An alternative to your SCREECHING HUM, could be "Mouth swarm", could perhaps have a better name, where the caster opens his mouth and lots of insects fly out towards the target. Short range. Deals Wits damage equal to PL. Counts as a fear attack. Just because that is kind of a canonical attack.. and it would actually be quite scary.

You also asked for anything that could make it more "unique and special".
Perhaps instead of ingredients, all spells from the path attracts vermin in the area, clinging to all nearby surfaces. All follow up spells cast during the following hour within line of sight from where you cast a spell from this path, can treat the swarm as an ingredient, the swarm is not consumed (or well it might be, but you attract new bugs at the same time).
Spells can still have conditions, like a "corpse must be present", but they are not considered a spell ingredient, they are just conditions.
Perhaps some powerful spells, like the Summon Swarm actually consumes the swarm without creating new insects.
 
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Re: Entomancy magic path

Tue 04 Oct 2022, 07:19

"Mouth Swarm" sounds really cool. The insects surrounding you is an interesting idea too (symbolism and ice magic already have almost limitless ingredient, so it doesn't seem that broken), I'll think about it.

One idea I had was to add an "insect buffer" equal to you rank(or rank+1) in the discipline which gains 1 point(in form of insects gathering around you) each quarter day/full day and you can consume these points as ingredients. The main problems are:
1) It would go against the game principle that nothing is free
2) It would make it too much similiar to games like Pathfinder and D&D where classes are more mechanic and based upon resources/day

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