Bell Digest vol04p04.txt

Subject:  The Breath of the Goddess,  Volume 4,  Number 4

First Distribution:  February 22,  1990

This issue:
	Error in Elemental Bolt Wand			(Andrew Bell)
	Checks vs. Experience and a few toys.		(michael p mittmann)
	a few more magic items				(michael p mittmann)

Ed's note:  Some of you may get duplicates of this,  separated by a fair
amount of time,  due to a mail problem here.  That's what "delete" is
for...

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Subject: Error in Elemental Bolt Wand

From: bell@cs.unc.edu (Your error-prone editor)

Sigh...

Instead of waiting until I brought in my write-up for the (Elemental) bolt
wand,  I wrote from memory,  and remembered erroneously.

The first paragraph should be changed to the following two paragraphs:

An elemental bolt wand increases the power of an (element) bolt spell
by focusing the spell energy.  For every two magic points the user puts
into intensity,  the wand will boost the effect of the spell by one,
up to the limit of the wand.   For example,  if a sorceror holds a four
point wand and casts a nine point elemental bolt spell,  the effective
intensity of the spell will be thirteen.  A two intensity spell cast with
the same wand will yield a three intensity bolt.  Note that a given wand
is tied to a specific element,  and will not affect bolt spells associated
with other elements.  The wand does not give knowledge of the spell,  but
sorcerors commonly enchant a spell matrix for the given elemental bolt
into the wand.

The sorceror need merely have sufficient free int (or for campaigns using
skills instead,  sufficient skill) to cast the original spell,  not the
boosted form.

Also,  add the following optional section:

Optional wand rule (for lower power campaigns):

The wand requires magic points to work,  although it can store them in
advance.  For every five points put into the wand,  it will boost one
spell by one point.  The standard enchantment allows 25 magic points
to be put into the wand per point,  thus allowing 5 fully boosted spells
between chargings.

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Subject: Checks vs. Experience and a few toys.

From: michael p mittmann 

	There has been a debate going back and forth in your 'zine
about experience points, and check grubbing PCs.  I personally
prefer the check system, but I did want some way to reward (or
punish) exceptionally good or poor playing (both intelligent
actions and good roleplaying).  So I came up with the system of
giving "character checks".  These are checks which are awarded
by the GM at his(her) whim, then when the character would normally
roll his(her) checks each one of these gives her(him) a 2% better chance
of making each check.  I allow my PCs to save these up, so that
over the course of many adventures they may accumulate 10 or
15, to give them a better chance at their more difficult skills.
Naturally the GM may remove (or give negative) checks, as is
often done when a character switches weapons in the middle of
a battle.

There were a few requests for other people's magic items,
I play RQ2, so these might not mesh exactly, but if you like them
I'm sure you can convert them.  I would also recommend the book
Plunder (Chaosium) as an excellent list of Quest-worthy magic items.

1) Caocodemon sacrifice dagger:
	This is an item created by Caocodemon, and was given to one of his
first priests to encourage him to sacrifice people.  The dagger is a simple
curved dagger, made out of a bluish stone.  It does d4+2, and slashes
(not impales) on special rolls.  The dagger is unbreakable by anyone less
than a dwarf with truestone or adamantium tools.  This item is coveted
(by all chaotic and wrong thinking people) because for every person killed
with this dagger it does an additional d4, and an additional 10% to hit.
If the killed person is not an initiate (or better) of another cult his
soul goes to Cacodemon, who after torturing the spirit for a while, finally
destroys his intelligence, and eats his pow, consequently the person can't
be resurrected.  After 20 people are killed (and the dagger does 21d4+2, +200%)
the magic is so powerful that cacodemon can't enchant the dagger any more,
in which case each additional 10 points of pow sacrificed gives the user
a point of rune magic.

Additional effects are:
	After sacrificing 5 people the dagger turns dull red, and is
treated as iron when considering damage done to other weapons.
	After 10 people the dagger continually drips blood, and will not
leave the wielder's hand (ignore all weapon dropped or shattered fumbles).
Additionally the pow of all further sacrificed people is added to the pow
of the dagger for the purpose of resisting spells cast on the dagger or
the wielder.
	After 15 people ignore all fumbles except for the "injure allies"
fumbles.
	After 20 the user starts gaining rune magic as described above.

Note that this magic wears away.  In my campaign only the people killed
within the last 7 days count, you may want to change this to the last
season, or since the wielder last slept, whichever you feel is appropriate.

2) Yarnus's spear.
Yarnus was a hero of Yelmalio, who discovered a path for making this magic
spear.  Since then many have followed this path and made other spears like
it.  I estimate that there are about 40 of these spears in existence.
The spear is a large runic gold bound spear, doing normal damage as a spear,
or 2d10 as a javelin.  The major power of this spear is that it can be stored
in the sun, when it's owner decides that (s)he doesn't want to carry the
spear (s)he throws it towards the sun, and the spear, incredibly enough,
continues in a straight line until it reaches the sun.  When the user
wants the spear back he reaches out, grabs a sunbeam, which turns to the
spear in his hand.
	Nice side effects:
(1)	since time does not pass for the spear while it is being stored,
the magic on it may be used for several battles.  For instance,  assume
that the wielder gets into a battle, and casts bladesharp 4 extension 1
on the spear.  10 minutes later the battle is over, and the wielder stores
the spear in the sun.  Two days later he calls the spear back, and it
still has the remaining 50 minutes of bladesharp on it.
(2)	Since the spear goes to Yelm, sacrifices and gifts to Yelm may be
attached to it, and they will get to him.  It is up to the G.M. to determine
if this does the P.C. any good.
	Irritating side effect:
If the day is cloudy, or it is night you can't get your spear back.


Tin fan.
	This is a .5 meter folding tin fan, which is also created by
heroquesting.  During young Orlanth's wanderings he ran into ???????,
and contested with him, Orlanth was winning handily, when ??????? drew
out a fan, fanned it towards Orlanth, and told him to blow away, Orlanth
(fumbling a will roll) found to his chagrin that he was unable to resist
the call to blow across the landscape, and fled from the battle.

The item is used by reciting "blow away, lose control, flee from me now"
while waving the fan at a sylph.  If a pow vs. pow is successful
the elemental is dismissed.
	If this roll is failed the sylph will lose control and attack
the wielder of the fan (enraged by being reminded of this ignominious
defeat).  If it is not obvious I haven't found a good god to replace
???????, so if anyone has any sugestions I'd like to hear them.


mike     )(  Y

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From: michael p mittmann 

Subject: a few more magic items

A few more magic items:
Arrow of impaling.
	This arrow impales whatever it hits.  Note that if the character
fails to hit his desired target it will probably impale itself into the
ground, (or a tree, or a stone) and will have to be dug out.  The GM
should use his discretion as to when this breaks.  Note that this isn't
only a combat item, in the book I got this out of (The Summer Tree by
Donaldson) it was used to cross a river by tying a rope to the arrow,
and shooting the arrow into a cliff on the opposite side.

Flawed sensitivity crystals:
	A sensitivity crystal provides a few (d8) points of pow per day which
can only be used on detect spells.  Detect spells in RQ2 cause the detected
object to glow.  A few of my favorite modifications to these crystals are:
	1) Inverts what glows, e.g. for a detect magic all of the items that
are not magic would glow.
	2) range enhancing:  allows you to detect at 2 or 4  or 10 times the
distance. (A cruel GM might give one that only works at 1/3 the normal
range, and the PCs may never figure this out)
	3) Defective:  Just lights up one random object.  This should become
obvious when someone casts a detect gold and a tree lights up.  (although
the players actions until they figure this out might be amusing)

Flawed healing crystal:
	A Healing doubling crystal doubles healing (and xenohealing if you
play with that), so a heal 3 cast through it becomes a heal 6.
	A rather nasty flaw to this crystal is that it seal the wound after
the heal spell is cast, so if a PC sustains a 9 point wound, and the crystal
is used to double a heal 3 the remaining 3 points of injury can't be healed
by magic, and must be healed by time (at 1 pt/week).

Flawed spell doubling crystals:
p	A standard spell doubling crystal doubles the points of a multiple
point spell.  So a 3 point crystal can be used to double a bladesharp 3 into
2 bladesharp 3s, or a bladesharp 2 into a bladesharp 4.  (Bladesharp has a
4 point max in RQII).  Fun flaws are:
	Doubles range instead.
	Doubles duration instead.
	Doubles the number of spells cast:  Turns a BS2 into 2 BS2s instead
of a BS4, on the other hand this does allow you to cast 2 spells at a time,
2 light spells, 2 befuddles...


have fun. 		Y )(

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