Shadowed Galaxy Vampire Bloodlines – The Irtach Warlords and the Okar Archivists

And for the next couple of vampire “bloodlines” I have the Irtach Warlords and the Okar Archivists. For those looking for more background, here are some links – First Stage Vampire Template, Vampire Lifecycle, Second Stage Vampire Template and the Yytsuri Pilots Bloodline.

Irtach Warlords

The signs of an informational outpost in a civilization – a combination of primitive technologies, massive pyramids and ceremonies, large-scale irrigation and organization beyond what the local communications technology could readily support, a variety of social and architectural patterns, and hundreds more – are difficult to read from space. False positives are all too common.

The Irtach do not care. Any potential trace of the enemy must be investigated, and any actual enemy presence expunged. False positive or true detection, an Irtach Core will land, recruit agents, build up defenses (sometimes including one or more mighty fortification), and march to war.

As many as possible of those agents will be powerful warriors, with cunning skill in tactics, military engineering, and weapon smithing as desirable secondary qualities. Dark, unnaturally fast, powerful, and skilled warriors will strike at the hearts of empire, at the hidden rulers who gnaw within their hearts like a corrupting worm.

If and when such a presence is found… waves of barbarians, dominated by inhuman warlords, will match, while others will infiltrate the empires while much of their resources is drawn to their frontiers. The struggle will continue until either the warlords of the secret rulers stand victorious.

Of subtlety, or the nourishment of civilization, the Irtach know little – but competing kingdoms will sharpen the arts of war, and weapons, and of producing food and supplies for armies, and that is often enough. Few Irtach will survive long enough to advance in their life cycle, and any civilization dominated by the Irtach is unlikely to produce starships – but the galaxy is vast and slow. Drifting Irtach “subspace mines” will occasionally encounter a starship – and the cycle will turn anew. It is a slow cycle, even when compared to other vampire strains – but the Irtach criteria for a host species or civilization are very broad and unselective.

The Irtach bloodline has – like almost every known bloodline – lost quite a few functions over the generations. Many scholars suspect, however, that they are behaviorally very close to the original design – with a poor understanding of the species and cultures they use as hosts, a rather unsubtle approach to dealing with their targets, and unrefined selection criteria. It is suspected that the Irtach rarely actually win, but they can certainly both harass their targets endlessly and provide cover for more subtle bloodlines.

Disciplines: Entropic Will, Informational Perception, Predatory Gaze, Sense Life, and The Dark Hand.

Traits: Bones of Iron and Night Terrors – usually taking the form of a “demonic” mount or battle companion.

The Irtach are fairly efficient super-soldiers, but aren’t really very good commanders. They often take command in primitive settings on the basis of their raw personal combat ability – but they usually try to get some good advisors to handle strategy for them.

Okar Archivists

Mental imbalances are all too common in vampires – some due to mental stress, some due to damaged programming, and some due to old directives that are being misapplied. It seems virtually certain that the original vampire programming included some directive(s) along the lines of “collect and organize information on the enemy and their devices and relay it back”. After all… the Cores automatically serve as local communications hubs, collecting intelligence on your opponents is an incredibly basic bit of military strategy, and relaying it to some central collection point is only sensible.

Of course, it also seems pretty likely that that central collection nexus failed millions of years ago. Many Cores (with the Irtach being a likely exception), however, are still quite capable of collecting information, revising their tactics, examining the enemies weapons, and devising new strategies and counters to use.

Some, strains, however, seem to have retained a part of that hypothetical “gather and organize information on the enemy and their devices” directive but have lost the bit about “on the enemy” – leaving them with a great desire to collect and catalog knowledge and artifacts, either in general or within a more specific field. The lesser spawn generally focus on a particular field whether or not the Core does however; even a first or second stage Vampire does not have the time required to study EVERYTHING.

And thus you wind up with obsessive antiquarian vampires in robes and bedroom slippers shuffling through their collection of 15’th century armor, or sharply-dressed art dealers who have been in the “family business” for centuries with huge private collections, or librarians who dabble in things that man was not meant to know (but which they feel that vampires probably WERE meant to know).

This doesn’t mean that they aren’t dangerous. An archivist is all too likely to know a targets exact vulnerabilities and to have some elegantly lethal solution handy that everyone else forgot about three centuries ago, will almost certainly have some equally obsessive servants (or grad students) about, and invariably has plenty of equipment handy. Still, an Archivist can usually be bargained with; all you need is to have something that isn’t already in the collection to trade with them.

Disciplines: Element Master (Chemical Catalysis), Element Master (Earth and Stone), Plague Carrier, Stalking Death, and Transfusion.

Traits: Ghula and Venomed Touch.

Archivists are remarkably dangerous when they want to be. They can easily turn all kinds of raw materials into explosives or deadly substances, turn a handful of pebbles into bullets, kill with a touch, and corrupt or addict people.

Shadowed Galaxy Vampire Bloodlines – The Yytsuri Pilots Guild

While the vampire “bloodlines” (First Stage, Lifecycle, and Second Stage) of the galaxy are now diversifying, with a generation time of several thousand years the process is relatively slow. Still, while the various vampires strains are easily recognizable as variations on a theme, the vast size of the galaxy has ensured that numerous variations have arisen. 

The Warp Drive is the standard for most physical races; it avoids spacefield complications, the horrible risks of hyperspace or subspace, and quite a lot of other problems. Unfortunately, even the fastest (and exponentially more dangerous and power-hungry) Warp Drives require days per light year – while a Subspace Drive with a skilled pilot may require only an hour or so and is considerably simpler to build and maintain.

Sadly, Subspace Drives lead to the ships experiencing decades or centuries of time during the trip – and ships vanish entirely all too often.

Except, of course, for the ships of the Yytsuri.

Long centuries past, during the Yytsuri’s first attempts to reach the stars, a wealthy research sponsor proved to be remarkably gifted. Zhir could not only coax incredible performance out of even a basic subspace drive, but could reliably pilot a ship through subspace, apparently tapping into the energies of that realm to enter partial stasis and so easily survive the trip. Zhir piloted between the stars for the years of a greatly extended lifespan, and even managed to train a few others to do the same – although whatever mysterious process Zhir used to do so had a high casualty rate. Still, there were always more starry-eyed youngsters eager to gamble death against a long, long, life of wealth, luxury, and a service to their people that no others could provide amidst the freedom of the stars.

Eventually the Founder, grown old at last, took Zhirs private ship into space and vanished between the stars – a tradition that those of zhirs successors who beat the odds of space to grow old in the service of commerce, exploration, and defense, still observe.

Adrift between the stars, shielded from the “subspace mines” and other “haunted ships” by Zhir’s own projected aura, the Founder let Zhir’s crumbling physical form slip away to at last begin the long process of melding with Zhir’s ship – a task greatly eased by having a private ship, designed and built to Zhir’s own specifications, and saturated with several centuries worth of personalized attunements.

And some three thousand years later, a new Yytsuri Vampire Core found a world inhabited by a species that might – given a little protection and subtle nudging across the next few millennia – begin to reach for the stars.

And so protection and subtle nudging was given – and when the flowering came at last, there would once again be research sponsors and potential pilots waiting.

And eventually, after many more centuries of expansion and piloting… some of those pilots would take their personal ships on one last voyage, to vanish between the stars they’d opened the path to – and to eventually become new Yytsuri Cores to repeat the cycle once again.

The Yytsuri “Bloodline” has – fairly obviously – reached near-full symbiotic status with it’s host civilizations and has begun to spread fairly rapidly – at least by vampire core standards. It is, however, limited by slow recruitment (the desire that most “recruits” be willing and survive requires very careful selection of candidates and a lot of extra work), slow development (the desire for personalized ships calls for some very specific circumstances), and the need to locate and civilize suitable candidate-species.

Worse, of course, the Yytsuri may be helpful – but they push new species out into the galaxy and are not sufficient protection in themselves from the remains of other self-reproducing weapons. The galactic ecosystem is very dangerous, and pushing new species out into it is not always doing them a favor.

The Yytsuri Bloodline:

Disciplines: Cyberwarp (used to gradually attune ships systems to themselves), Electricity Master (fairly obvious), Entropic Blast (allowing fast drive startups), N-Space Adaption (to allow the use of subspace drives), and Subspace Piloting.

Traits: Breath of Puruza (used, among other things, for spacewalking, drastically slowing their subjective time while piloting through subspace, and detaching from their physical forms in a controlled fashion) and Cloaking (used to present the appearance that their ships are already hosting a Vampire Core or Haunt).

And I should now be able to get back to posting and answering questions here. Hopefully I can get caught up before something else comes up to interrupt.

Shadowed Galaxy – Second Stage Vampire Template

Second Stage Vampire (Acquired Template, +32 CP / +1 ECL, requires First Stage Vampire):

The trouble with the Second Stage Vampire template is that – at least for any individual Vampire Core – either a good deal of it isn’t working any longer or there were different designs in the first place. While it is possible for a Vampire to upgrade – either being granted or absorbing a missing subfunction of -functions from another Vampire or Vampire Core – this can cause serious programming conflicts, strange power malfunctions, and even temporary (or permanent) madness.

In any case, a when one Vampire creates a new one, the new one gets its sire’s version. Of course, mutations can occur, and be passed on – meaning that various competing evolutionary lines of the basic template exist across the galaxy. Fortunately for other life forms, however, Vampire evolution tends to be a bit slow.

Temporal Selection: The flow of time charts the course of entropy cascading towards timelike infinity. But where energy vanishes, entropy flows briefly backwards, where it appears, it may spin into a whirlpool of closed loops, the future echoing into the past. And anchored as they are in the steady flow of time in the middle realms, a Vampire may extend it’s reach into subspace and find a handful of moments and echoes out of time to turn to it’s own purposes.

• Adept (Bullet Time, Logistics, Networking, and Tough It Out), Specialized for Double Effect / only applies to Racial Bonuses (6 CP). Skill Boosts: Bullet Time +10 (2 CP), Logistics +10 (2 CP), Networking +10 (2 CP), and Tough It Out +10 (2 CP).
  • So far, this seems to be a foundational ability; appearing in every second stage vampire as yet observed.

Entropic Scrutiny (Witchcraft, The Secret Order, 6 CP). The second-stage Vampire Template builds on whatever affinity the user / victim has for informational effects. This seems to be a basic requirement (minimum of class D); creatures with no ability to access Informational effects at all (class E) cannot become second stage Vampires. Each line possesses five of the following possible abilities:

All of these abilities are, of course, Specialized and/or Corrupted versions of basic Witchcraft abilities.

• Cyberwarp (Elfshot): You may briefly disrupt (2d6 Rounds or one minor long term malfunction for 1 Power), damage or slightly modify (2d6 damage per Power), or even usurp control of or perform minor repairs (3d6 rounds, 3 Power) microtronic systems. Individual systems may be targeted at a range of 60 feet or the user may spend +1 power to affect everything within thirty feet. The first seven Power points worth of effects generated in a day do not count against the user’s power reserves.
  • It is believed that this effect is a precursor to the effects that a “Spacefield Mine” uses to bring spaceships under it’s control – unless it’s sufficiently “stackable” to simply be applied over and over again across many years, in which case nothing else may be needed.
• Element (Specify) Master (Witchfire, specialized in manipulating a particular elemental force for double effect). Known variants include Ice, Fire, Electricity, Radiation, Water, Blood, Earth and Stone, Chemical Catalysis, and even “Darkness”. The affinity is apparently informationally based, as conventional physics seems to have little bearing.
  • A fairly powerful, but rapidly draining effect, often serving as a sort of hold-out weapon or as a tool. Each branch of Element Mastery is a separate ability, making it possible for occasional vampires to have more than one elemental affinity.
• Entropic Will (Elfshot): The ability to cause minor disruptions and malfunctions in informational effects, damaging creatures that exist primarily on that level and warping effects. This is Specialized for Increased Effect and Corrupted for Reduced Cost (The first seven power worth of effects used each day do not count against the user’s power reserves) points. Unfortunately, this can only be used against Informational Beings and simply damages such beings, rather than causing specific effects.
  • This is a very common ability. While not as useful as a proper informational weapon, it is one of the few other ways to readily inflict long-term harm on many informational entities given that – for most such beings – any “physical form” they may take is merely being puppeted.
• Entropic Blast (Infliction, Corrupted for increased effect (may be employed once per round as a defensive reflex)/ negative energy effects only): This ability drains energy into subspace – aging larger targets, disintegrating smaller ones, and negating energy.
  • An expensive, but useful, way to open sealed doors, get rid of evidence, and counter incoming energy attacks. Interestingly, it can also provide the negative energy “spark” needed to activate a warp drive or subspace portal swiftly.
• Eyes Of The Night (The Inner Eye): You may see through the eyes of animals in a 120′ radius – and even understand and influence them very slightly, gaining a +6 bonus on relevant rolls to understand or manage them. In general, no roll is required to get them to glance at something they normally would not care about, or peek at something before hiding – but asking them to go much beyond that point will require appropriate skill checks.
  • While classic tales of Vampires commanding swarms of beasts exist, Vampires with such talents are probably supplementing this ability in other ways. At its base, this is most useful for short-range spying and may explain why so many tales mention heavy infestations of rats, spiders, bats, and similar creatures in Vampire strongholds.
• Informational Perception (Dreamfaring): Specialized in detecting informational creatures and effects and allowing the user to intuitively grasp some basic information about their nature. This is a continuous ability with no cost.
  • Another very common ability, this is a considerable aid in combating informational entities and the various weapons they littered the galaxy with.
• Masque of Life (The Adamant Will): lower-grade Informational effects will not reveal that the user is a Vampire. This has no cost and is a constant effect.
  • A rare, and fairly highly specialized, ability, but very useful when it does happen to come up. . Many vampire lines with this ability are hardly even aware of it.
• N-Space Adaption (Hyloka): You may make the necessary adjustments to survive hyperspace and subspace travel. This is a constant effect with no cost.
  • Normally Hyperspace and Subspace travel are dangerous, damaging, and potentially fatal for creatures with hyperspace and/or subspace templates. Simple objects and even most devices with such extensions can handle the shifting energy levels, but living creatures have much more delicate metabolisms and systems. This is most often seen linked with the Subspace Piloting ability (below).
• Plague Carrier (Hyloka): The Vampire may virtually wipe out a victims immune system with a touch and the expenditure of 3 Power. While their bodies will recover given time, few survive long enough to do so. An inverse form – helping the target throw off diseases and bestowing a copy of the user’s own immunities – exists, but is even rarer.
  • A subtle but powerful weapon of assassination and terror, the fabled “Death Touch” can leave a victim apparently unharmed, only to see them sicken and die days or even weeks later.
• Predatory Gaze: You may spend 2 Power to generate Fear in a 30′ cone, a 60′ line, or a 20′ radius. While a standard Witchcraft save (Will, DC 13 + Cha Mod) applies, success only reduces the effect to Shaken and the Duration from 2d6 rounds to one round.
  • While blatantly overt, and easily resisted by those with strong wills, the ability to terrorize a nearby group with a mere glance can be very useful in more primitive settings. Modern weapons, however, greatly outrange this ability – and even at close range, frightening people equipped with modern weapons is not always a good idea.
• Sense Life (The Inner Eye): You may detect the presence, and general health level, of unshielded living creatures within 60 feet. In general, “signal strength” is determined by the size and metabolic rate of the organism in question. Slimes are barely detectable with concentration, grass can be “seen” as a vague carpet, trees are translucent phantoms at best (wrapped around black cores), and animals “glow” more or less brightly. Individuals can be identified, but it usually takes some practice.
  • While modern sensors can do much the same thing, this is a marvelous ability to have in close combat, in the dark, underwater, or in a primitive setting, where it can usually compensate for lack og sight in a fight. Sadly, while this will negate the effects of soft cover, hard cover works better than ever since it usually has no life of its own to let it be “seen”.
    
• Stalking Death (The Adamant Will): If a Vampire with this ability is placed under a compulsion or similar effect from something other than a higher-stage Vampire it will simply make whatever is attempting to use such an effect the Vampires top-priority target.
  • While this is a specialized defense mechanism, so far nine out of ten groups of adventurers agree that – when some mind-manipulating menace has frozen everyone in place or something – seeing the look on it’s face as one of its “hypnotized” victims goes berserk, shoves a hand grenade into its mouth, and starts unloading every weapon in the party into it, is well worth putting up with the group vampire.
• Subspace Piloting (Witchsight): You may spend 2 Power to gain a +18 bonus on a Subspace Piloting check. You may also automatically sense the presence of major subspace creatures, if a vehicle is currently “haunted”, and serious subspace disturbances.
  • While this is usually a marginal ability, it becomes far more useful in combination with N-Space Adaption and a starfaring civilization.
• The Dark Hand (The Inner Eye): You may share the senses of your subordinate vampires as needed and are automatically aware of their status and locations as long as they remain within a radius of (Cha/3) miles. If they are destroyed, you may sense that from hundreds of miles away.
  • While awareness of your troops locations and activities is useful, this does not automatically provide a communications link – unless it is selected twice, to add a Glamour component.
• Transfusion (Healing, Specialized for Double Effect / only usable on others, produces various addictive effects, long term applications cause psychological disturbances).
  • While infusing others with a portion of a Vampires pool of stored life-energies is a useful talent in emergencies or on the battlefield, long-term applications tend to cause slowly cumulative distortions in the recipients mind and body.

Finally, second stage vampires may select any two abilities from among those available to first stage vampires (The Dark Flame, Voice of the Dead, Venomed Touch, Breath of Puruza, Wrath of the Sea, Bones of Iron, Dance of Flames, and Darksense) or from the following list:

• Blood Draught: Some second stage vampires can imitate the abilities of those they drain energy from. That’s Double Enthusiast, Specialized and Corrupted for Triple Effect: / can only mimic the abilities of creatures they’ve drained energy from, can only mimic supernatural or extraordinary abilities as selected by the game master, may only mimic one ability per creature (6 CP for 6 CP worth of mimicking). The changeover can be near-instant when they have just drained someone, otherwise it will require the usual amount of time to get an imprint out of their ‘library”. Imprints do fade eventually, but it usually requires several years.
• Cloaking: May vary how old and powerful a vampire they seem to be (6 CP). This is a pretty specialized talent, but is occasionally useful for impressing other vampires and various creatures. It can also be ueed to simulate the presence of a Haunt or Vampire Core in an area or aboard a ship, warding off Subspace Mines and other vampires.
• Deathly Armor: DR 3/-, versus both physical and energy damage. A simple application of negative energy to negate kinetic and other energies, this is a powerful advantage in more primitive settings, but modern weapons and armor often surpass it handily.
• Ghula: Second stage vampires can control a limited number of the first stage vampires they create and a selection of servants infused with a small portion of their own energies. That’s Witchcraft, Lure of Darkness, Specialized for Increased Effect / Subspace-tainted servants and Lesser Vampires only (6 CP).
• Night Terrors (Witchcraft / Birth of Flames): The user can project a portion of his or her own mind into a minor subspace entity, creating a deadly entity at his or her beck and call. Such entities most often manifest as a quasi-“demonic” companion or familiar, but fearsome steeds and such are also fairly common.
• Subspace Shroud / Costly: Complex effects directed at the user often fail as their energies are shunted away into subspace.
• Umbral Draught (Witchcraft / Grounding). The user may shunt nearby energies into subspace.
• Vigor of the Night: Add +4d6+2 Vitality / Power, Corrupted/only to power Vampire abilities (6 CP). This is straightforward, simple, and virtually always useful.
• Wraith Step: The ability to briefly draw their material forms partway into subspace can render a second-stage vampire shadowy and immaterial and allow them to use that realms distorted space-time to shift from place to place or to provide brief bursts of incredible speed – but that realms energy drain, distortions of entropy and probability, and apparently-malevolent nature render such tricks somewhat dangerous. Ashen Rebirth (Shadow/Negative Energy variant) with Dimension Door (9 CP) and Leaping Fire (Corrupted; cannot heal damage, remove fatigue, or remove exhaustion, 4 CP), both Specialized / moving partially into subspace can have all kinds of negative consequences besides the basic vitality drain of powering the ability (6 CP in total).

In general, it’s safe to use Wraith Step up to (Con Mod +1, 1 minimum, use Cha Mod +1 if no Constitution score) times per session. After that… roll a DC 20 Fortitude save. On a failure, roll 1d4 plus the number of such saves failed so far in the session.

2) Drained. The user is drained of 2d6 power. If the user lacks sufficient power, take damage instead.
3) Touch of Decay: Some of your items carried suffer the ravages of time and decay; Lose 1d6 points worth of game-master selected equipment (usually the most sensitive high-energy stuff) from whatever you carry.
4) Energy Cascade. Lights dim or go out, energy cells are drained, and systems fail in a wide radius. Sadly, this includes the user’s own weapons and equipment.
5) Entropic Cascade: Equipment, vehicles, and materials are destroyed in a wide radius. Sadly, this focuses on those the user has a personal connection to.
6) Dark Mutation: One or more creatures nearby becomes a twisted and malevolent monster.This may also result in a creeping mutation to a character.
7) Entity: Something gets loose from subspace. Depending on their level of materiality, these may be known as haunts, demons, possessing spirits, or even result in the creation of quasi-vampires (although such creatures are unstable and rarely survive for long).
8) Twisted Realm: Inanimate objects in a wide radius become hostile, computers develop malevolent programming, and robots start trying to kill people.
9) Time Shift. The user vanishes, to reappear weeks (or occasionally much longer) later.
10) The user ages 1d4 x 10 years.
11+) Spontaneous Existence Failure: The user falls fully into subspace, and probably ceases to exist.

While this is obviously less a “template” and more of a grab bag of thematically-related abilities, Vampires can fill a wide variety of roles in society beyond “monster” or even “super-soldier” – if they happen to belong to a “bloodline” with the appropriate abilities.

Second Stage Vampires of the Shadowed Galaxy, Part I – Background

The Shadowed Galaxy game is currently taking a break – but the group has determined how the “life cycle” of the local version of Vampires works.

Stage I is the infection – and weaponization – of a material entity by a Subspace Template. There are a couple of ways that that can happen including secondary infection by a carrier, direct infection by a late-stage Vampire Core, and (no doubt) weird accidents and experiments – but the results almost always fall into one of three categories.

• Primitive animals die. Evidently there has to be a certain level of complexity and size to support the template/infection.
• More complex animals usually die, but some (usually animals that are already predatory, sizeable, and dangerous) will become extremely dangerous (if still mostly animalistic) vampire-themed predators with flashes of intelligence.
• Sapient entities still fairly often die, or go mad, or suffer some other serious complication – but the survivors emerge as First Stage Vampires.

If a first stage vampire survives for long enough, or focuses on developing their abilities, or absorbs (or is granted) additional subspace energies and programming from a higher-stage vampire, they may develop into second stage vampires.

Stage II Vampires are more powerful – and are able to create groups of first stage vampire followers as well as enjoying several other social advantages. (This may not have been an original part of the design, but it has almost certainly been selected for over the generations).

A very old second stage vampire, or one that suffers “death” in some way it can’t recover from, loses it’s physical body and link to the material realm – and drifts out into interstellar space (since they are repelled by nearby planets and suns) as what was at first labeled a “Subspace Mine”. Such “mines” are drawn to ships using Warp (but not Hyperspace, Subspace, or Informational, although normalspace drives may or may not be targeted) Drives – and if they contact one in flight will attempt to infect it, disposing of the crew along the way.

The original mind may or may not survive, but even if it does… it will usually be strongly influenced by the array of expert programs that normally takes over at this point.

A Stage III Vampire – or “Haunted Ship” – is a dire presence in a multi-century long process of integrating itself with the structure, systems, and power supplies of a starship (or occasionally a space station or other vessel) and rebuilding it to suit itself. As such, it can animate the structure of the ship, direct it’s energies, weapons, and drives, drain other sources of energy, and defend itself with vigor.

At the end of the process… important systems will have been tightly integrated and compacted, the materials used for such useless items as crew quarters and life support will have been converted to extra armor, weapons, and power systems, and the new Stage IV Vampire Core will seek out a planet hosting an appropriate sapient race, land, conceal itself – and start spawning a force of Stage I Vampires.

Obviously enough, any permanent solution to a planetary vampire plague starts with destroying the vampire core or cores – but given that they are generally functioning starships as well as possessing a high-powered array of subspace-based powers that’s a difficult proposition at best.

For good or ill however… it has been long enough since the Vampire Plague was set in motion across the galaxy for both mutation and evolution to play a role. Some Vampire Cores find it difficult or impossible to maintain control of the vampires they create, others bestow bizarre variations on the usual abilities, others have lost important parts of their targeting or behavioral programming, and still others retain far more of the original hosts mind than was (presumably) ever intended. Not surprisingly, some strains have adapted to fit into, or conceal themselves in, civilizations more effectively. Some may not even really resemble the original design any more.

The group has not yet deciphered the full programming of the Vampire Cores – but has observed that they seem to treat Informational Creatures – such as “Mummies” as primary targets, and rarely attempt to exterminate other targets. There is even some indication that they intentionally “cultivate” species that can produce effective informational weaponry and/or technological starships suitable for conversion to more vampire cores – ensuring that the former remain in constant conflict (and thus producing more weapons) and that the latter continue to produce starships.

They have also discovered that Subspace Mines will not attempt to take over a ship that is already “haunted” or which already has a Vampire Core aboard. Sadly, this consideration does not extend to First and Second stage vampires.

While the exact history of the galactic wars has lost millions of years before humanity evolved, the internal evidence strongly suggests that the subspace species involved lacked direct access to the Informational level of reality – and so were drafting proxy warriors from matter-based species that had at least SOME access to that level of things.

Given that the vampires have a vested interest in the survival of civilizations with informational capabilities and/or the ability to build technological starships to possess, as well as a sizeable population to recruit from, there is a strong likelihood that they have been gradually evolving towards a symbiotic relationship with appropriate host species. The jury on the “Mummies” is still out.

The second stage vampire template got complicated enough – and took long enough to write – that I’m splitting things here. Part II will be the Template, and Part III will be some of the types.

Gaming Harry Potter III – Blood And Fire

For today, it’s an offline question, summarized as “are there any more really problematic pieces of magic in the Potterverse outside of the “Deathly Hallows” themselves?”

Yes indeed, there is at least one more really major problematic magical effect or spell in the Harry Potter universe – but I didn’t see much point in addressing it the last time around since you have to replace it to make the story work. The series just… kind of falls apart without it. Now I’m hardly the first to point it out, and there are doubtless some in-depth analysis of the problem out there – but here we go anyway.

The problem lies in the (nameless) blood protection effect that protects Harry through his childhood and which and forces him to keep going back to the Dursleys.

“While you can still call home the place where your mother’s blood dwells, there you cannot be touched or harmed by Voldemort. He shed her blood, but it lives on in you and her sister. Her blood became your refuge. You need return there only once a year, but as long as you can still call it home, there he cannot hurt you. Your aunt knows this. I explained what I had done in the letter I left, with you, on her doorstep. She knows that allowing you houseroom may well have kept you alive for the past fifteen years.”

-Dumbledore, in The Order Of The Pheonix.

It is this mysterious force that keeps Harry Potter safe as long as he lives with Petunia occasionally.

What’s problematic there?

Well… do those forces keep the rest of the household safe when they’re away from home? If not… why not just eliminate Vernon, Petunia, and Dudley? They go to work, shopping, and school don’t they? Kill them – or even just Petunia – and the protection soon ends. It’s not like Harry’s location, or the existence of the Dursleys, is a well-protected secret either. The sheer number of people who were hanging around when Harry was brought to the Dursleys tells us that.

They definitely don’t stop muggle aggression or non-magical forces or monsters. Otherwise other kids couldn’t join Dudley in “Harry Hunting”, the Dementor couldn’t have attacked, and Harry would be immune to household accidents (and to Dudley repeatedly punching him in the nose). So why not hire a muggle hit squad, or load a truck with something explosive and blow up the entire block, or drop a plane on the house, or send some monsters, or any of a million other ploys?

There are supposed to be LOTS of magical families which fell victim to the war. Was Harry’s mother the ONLY parent or grandparent or other relative who sacrificed themselves to try to save someone when they could have escaped? Why isn’t this kind of protection a reasonably common thing? Even if the activation spell Dumbledore used was rare (acceptance by a relative is not going to be all that hard to come by), why aren’t there plenty of related charms? Since reflecting the Killing Curse (and apparently a variety of lesser curses) and destroying the user didn’t call for anything but the sacrifice… why isn’t the death curse known for occasionally backfiring?

What kind of relationship is sufficiently close for the general protection spell anyway? Isn’t everyone in the world related? Why wasn’t a blood relationship and an activating spell and acceptance into a household required when Harry made a personal sacrifice to protect the other students at Hogwarts? After all, that apparently worked just fine and he didn’t even have to actually die. He just had to offer himself.

These mysterious forces suddenly stop working when Harry “comes of age”. But isn’t “coming of age” a legal fiction that varies between cultures and times? Why does the magic of love and sacrifice pay down-to-the-minute attention to a technicality?

According to some sources, the effect only protects Harry, and only while he’s actually at the house. That just makes it worse. Harry went to school before Hogwarts and surely spent as much time as possible away from the Dursleys. Of what use was this much-vaunted protection then? Why was having it worth a childhood full of abuse if there were other ways to provide a safehouse?

If visiting “home” briefly once a year is enough to recharge these mysterious forces… why not board Harry at Hogwarts for most of the year much earlier? After all, acceptance letters came addressed to the “Cupboard Under The Stairs” so they KNEW that Harry was being mistreated and – at the least – had intentionally avoided looking into it. What makes “growing up famous” more problematic than growing up “being physically (at the least we have in-book confirmation for Dudley beating him, pretty much necessarily with Vernon and Petunias approval – and abuse from them is very strongly implied) and emotionally abused and being chronically malnourished?” Why not at least pay the Dursleys to treat Harry better? Are they incorruptibly above bribes but not above mistreating a child?

Of course, this also allows Harry to unquestioningly turn his back on the “muggle” world – allowing him to (among many similar items) ignore the moral problems of actively erasing awareness of magic among muggles – thus preventing them from taking any measures to protect themselves against magical conflicts and monsters, treating them as second-class citizens at best (and as chattel at worst), and condemning people to death rather than sharing those fabulous magical cures with them – without bringing his “noble good guy” status into question.

Like it or not, those mysterious forces are a pretty basic part of the series setup and drive a number of major plot points down the line – and they don’t make a lot of sense. While the target audience will probably never notice the problem, gamers tend to want a lot more detail. Unfortunately, given that this bit of magic reeks of “poorly thought out plot device” there really isn’t one to give them.

Is there anything which works better?

Perhaps. Let us start from the beginning. We’re outright told that no one knows what happened the night that Harry’s parents died. Even Voldemort apparently didn’t fully understand and he didn’t seem all that interested in explaining what he did know anyway – and there were no other witnesses who were willing to talk about it. (Voldemort might have had an aide or something along – but if he did, and Harry was actually the target, then disposing of an injured baby doesn’t call for magic. Babies are fragile).

What was known to the magical authorities of the time was that Voldemort personally attacked two other high-powered magic users and – at the end – a baby who was in the house had suffered a non-lethal magical injury and all three of the people fighting were apparently dead.

So… like it or not, the “innocent baby survives a terrible magical attack and defeats the dark lord!” story was invented for public consumption, whether by the magical authorities or by someone at the Daily Prophet. The fact that authorial fiat made that story turn out to be more or less correct doesn’t change the fact that it was invented out of whole cloth.

Given the evidence they actually had… any sane investigator would have concluded that “Voldemort and the Potters took each other out and the baby was bloody lucky that he only got grazed by some nasty magic – likely a rebounding spell, corona effect, something that got interrupted during casting, or a part of a disrupted spell – instead of being killed”.

After all, “the power of love” would have done !@#$ all against the ceiling falling in, or the house burning down, or some such.

So why didn’t the surviving Death Eaters go after Harry as a small child?

Because the surviving Death Eaters were not outrageously stupid (that sort of goes along with “surviving” part) and were not inclined to accept the statements of the authorities or the newspapers at face value or they wouldn’t have been Death Eaters in the first place. They looked at the actual evidence… and concluded that the baby was a completely unimportant bystander, and had possibly been set up as a trap. Sure, killing the kid might have been satisfying – but they didn’t know that Voldemort would be coming back or that he would care.

Letting the public have their charming little story cost them nothing at all. It might even benefit them; having the public put their faith in miraculous child-saviors meant fewer calls for actual effective investigations and precautions.

And so they did not give a damn about Harry until Voldemort returned and started issuing orders again.

Oh, the prophecy?

Well, first up… Prophecies are kept secret. So nobody except a few individuals with high ranks in the government and an interest are going to know about it. Secondarily, that “prophecy”… is pretty vague.

The one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord approaches. Born to those who have thrice defied him, born as the seventh month dies. And the Dark Lord will mark him as his equal, but he will have power the Dark Lord knows not. And either must die at the hand of the other for neither can live while the other survives.

Couldn’t anyone vanquish a Dark Lord if they just got REALLY lucky? Which Dark Lord? Approaches in time, in space, or from another dimension? What does it take to defy him? What calendar? What kind of mark? Maybe on a magic test? What power? Is “the other” a third party? Why not? Neither can live while the other survives? Doesn’t that let out anyone who is alive?

So… Dumbledore, with a war to finish, a country to rebuild, Death Eaters to catch, a school and a government to run, and a thousand other tasks… schluffed off Harry on his relatives (as he was probably legally required to do anyway) using “otherwise he will die!” as a reason to get them to take the unwanted kid. The Death Eaters stayed away because there was no reason for them to bother – and if there WAS, the prophecy implied that they’d be unable to do anything anyway, as it wasn’t their destiny. And so Harry was neglected, and fell through the cracks, and the story could pretty much proceed as written whether those mysterious forces beyond his Mothers blessing ever actually existed or not.

Explaining “He turned seventeen and was suddenly attacked”? Well… Voldemort was back and “The Order got wind of an upcoming attack and decided to move him” actually covers that well enough.

If I ever run a Potterverse game… I think that I’ll just go with that. It will make things SO much simpler.

Hero System – Animate Object

Animate Object is a bit of a mess even in d20, where the spell and the resulting creatures are standardized. In the hero System, where no such standardization applies, such effects are a bit of a nightmare. Ergo, here we have Blueblood’s version – which summons up some wisps of magical telekinetic force which wrap themselves around relevant items and infuse them with a standardized amount of power – turning them into thirty point items of equipment.

While there is some enhancement involved, these are, however, fairly normal items; you can’t animate a doctors bag and expect it to heal your wounds. You can, however, animate a slab of rock and expect it to block attacks on you.

In game terms, the “Animation” is a “summon” effect – although it’s “summon an animating force” rather than “summon a creature”.

Animate Object Spell

• STR o (-10 CP)
• DEX 18 (24 CP): OCV 6, DCV 6 + 6 (Shrinking)
• CON 0 (-20 CP)
• BODY 2 (-16 CP)
• INT 3 (-7 CP)
• EGO 2 (-16 CP)
• PRE 10 (0 CP
• COM 0 (-5 CP)
• PD 0 (0 CP)
• ED 0 (0 CP)
• SPD 4 (12 CP)
• REC 0 (0 CP)
• END 0 (0 CP)
• STUN 2 (0 CP)

Elemental Control: Animate Object Spell (10-pt reserve); Entire creature dispelled if one or more powers disrupted or runs out): -1; Visible (Eldritch glow around item being animated. ): -¼ (4 CP)

• Telekinesis (STR 20) with Fine Manipulation, +10; Charges: 1, -½; Continuing Charges: 1 Hour, -5 lev; Only to wield the item they are conjured to animate): -1; (8 CP).
• Shrinking-3 (DCV +6, Height 15 cm/6″); Knockback Increase: 9; PER Bonus: -6; Charges: 1, -½; Continuing Charges: 1 Hour, -5 levels (7 CP).
• 2d6 Aid to Equipment Allowance (Item being animated) (Fade/hour, Max. 30); Range: 0; Generic Limitation (Only to pay for a specific piece of more-or-less conventional gear): -1; Autofire: 10 shots, ¾; Charges: 10, -¼; Affects: Single Power of Special Effect, +¼; Generic Limitation (Only GM-Approved Equipment): -1 (9 CP).
• Force Field (15 PD/15 ED); Charges: 1, -½; Continuing Charges: 1 Hour, -5 levels (7 CP).
• Power Defense (20 pts); Charges: 1, -½; Continuing Charges: 1 Hour, -5 levels (4 CP).
• Mental Defense (20 pts); Add to Total; Charges: 1, -½; Continuing Charges: 1 Hour, -5 levels (4 CP).
• +22 PRE Defense; Generic Limitation (Only to defend against presence attacks) (4 CP).
• 12″ Flight (NC: 24″); Non-Combat Multiplier: ×2, +0; Non-Combat (MPH): 36; Charges: 1, -½; Continuing Charges: 1 Hour, -5 levels (5 CP).

This could be considered cheese – after all, this packs everything that the “creature” does into a single elemental control and includes several “special” powers at that – but they do all effectively cost endurance (thus the one continuing charge limitation) and it’s hard to get much more of a tightly-linked group of powers than “these are the effects of a single spell, if any part of it fails, the entire spell does” and “it’s reasonably difficult to break”.

Run 0 (-12 CP), Swim 0 (-2 CP)

Disadvantage: No limbs, speech, or normal reflexes (All the Time, Fully) (-25 CP).

Net Cost: (-38) Attributes, 38 (Powers), -25 (Disadvantage).

Basically the spell is a wisp of light that wraps itself around the item being animated and causes it to fly around and act “on it’s own”. The “Aid” power basically means that all such objects have a standard (30) point base cost and are OAF. Animated objects are generally helpful, if not too bright, and so are purchased with a +1/4’th advantage for being reasonably cooperative.

Possible Animated Objects

Large Furniture (Sofa, Dining Table, Lounge):

• Hand-to-Hand Attack (10d6, Total 14d6) 0; Range: 0; Reduced END: Zero, +½ (22 CP)
• Armor (3 PD/3 ED) ; Usable By Others: Simultaneous Use, +½; Usable by Others Number: 2, +¼ (8 CP).

Large furniture can kick or ram quite effectively and provides a certain amount of cover. Unfortunately, most attacks will go straight through them, with very little loss of power.

Net / Bush / Tree / Rope / Carpet / Cloth / Chain

• +6 DC for Martial Attacks (12 CP).
  • Fast Strike (OCV +2, DCV +0, 12d6) (2 CP).
  • Flying Tackle (OCV +0, DCV -1, 10+v/5) (1 CP).
  • Choke Hold (OCV -2, DCV +0, Grab, 5d6 NND) (2 CP).
  • Martial Grab (OCV -1, DCV -1, STR 60) (1 CP).
  • Martial Disarm (OCV -1, DCV +1) (2 CP).
  • Nerve Strike (OCV -1, DCV +1, 5d6 NND) (2 CP).
  • Martial Throw (OCV +0, DCV +1, 10d6+v/5) (1 CP).
  • Weapon Bind (OCV +1, DCV +0, STR 60) (2 CP).
• +2 levels with HTH Combat (5 CP).

Items like these are surprisingly effective, especially when “wielded” with a telekinetic strength of twenty. With multiple ends and flexibility they can strike, entangle, and squeeze in a bewildering variety of ways.

Shield / Slabs of Rock / Interposing Objects

• Armor (10 PD/10 ED) Usable By Others: Simultaneous Use, +½ (22 CP).
• Flash Defense (Sight, 6 pts); Usable By Others: Simultaneous Use, +½ (4 CP).
• Power Defense (6 pts); Usable By Others: Simultaneous Use, +½ (4 CP).

Large solid objects that get in the way of attacks are simple, straightforward, and surprisingly effective. They may not be able to stop heavy attacks, but they can certainly blunt them.

Axe, Sword, Spear, Pole Arm, Etc.

• 1½d6 Killing Attack (HTH) (3d6 with telekinetic strength); Reduced END: Zero, +½ (18 CP).
• +2 levels with All Combat; Usable By Others: Simultaneous Use, +½ (12 CP).

Animated melee weapons are simple, straightforward, and quite dangerous – partially in their own right and partially because they are pretty good at supporting another fighter.

Statue / Manaquin / Tin Man / Scarecrow / Large Doll / Etc

• +20 STR; Doesn’t Affect Figured: -½; Charges: 1, -½; Continuing Charges: 1 Hour, -5 levels (7 CP).
• +20 STR (Only for HTH Combat); -½, Doesn’t Affect Figured: -½; Charges: 1, -½; Continuing Charges: 1 Hour, -5 levels (6 CP).
• +1 level w/Overall Level (Aide); Usable By Others: Simultaneous Use, +½ (7 CP)
• +5 levels with HTH Combat; Generic Limitation (OCV Only): -½ (10 CP).

Perhaps the most classic of all animated objects, humanoid (or at least vaguely humanoid) automatons are versatile and know no pain or hesitation, making them surprisingly good in a fight and even of some use as aides.

Fire Extinguisher

• Multipower (45-pt reserve); Fire Extinguisher Functions Only: -½, 2 Hex Maximum Range -¼ (16 CP).
  • u-1: 3d6 Flash (Normal Sight); Area Effect (One-hex) +½; Charges: +16.
  • u-1: 6d6 Suppress (Fire); Affect: Single Power of Special Effect, +¼; Charges: 8, +¼; Continuing Charges: 1 Minute, -3 levels.
  • u-1: 4d6 Transform Air to a coating of Ice (Minor, Single Object); Charges: 16, +0.
  • u-1: Darkness 3″ Radius (Extinguisher Powder) versus Smell and the Sight Sense Group, 8 Charges lasting 1 Turn Each.
• +4 levels with Extinguisher (6 CP).
• Hand-To-Hand Attack +2d6 at 0 End Cost (4 CP).

The Fire Extinguisher is a bit silly, but it can actually be fairly effective in making life awkward for many opponents. And if all else fails, it can simply bludgeon people.

Kevlar Clothing / Light Armor / Superhero Costume

• +10 STR; Charges: 1, -½; Continuing Charges: 1 Hour, -5 levels, Usable By Others: Power Lost, +¼ (4 CP).
• Armor (8 PD/8 ED); Usable By Others: Simultaneous Use, +½; Charges: 1, -½; Continuing Charges: 1 Hour, -5 levels (12 CP).
• Running (+12″); Charges: 1, -½; Continuing Charges: 1 Hour, -5 levels; Usable By Others: Power Lost, +¼ (10 CP).
• Superleap (+14″); Charges: 1, -½; Continuing Charges: 1 Hour, -5 levels (4 CP).

The Living Clothing / Armor is an old joke, but if it’s durable enough, it can actually be a surprisingly effective boost.

Heavy Pistol/Bow/Crossbow/Gyrojet Pistol/Etc

• 2d6 Ranged Killing Attack (RKA); Range: 225; Reduced END: Zero, +½ (22 CP).
• +3 levels with Ranged Combat (8 CP).

Simple and effective, the job of this object is simply to shoot at its targets. Why the ammunition never runs out is something of a mystery, but it IS magic.

Grenade Launcher

• Multipower (45-pt reserve); Generic Limitation (Grenades only): -½ (18 CP).
  • u-1: 2d6 Fragmentation Grenade: Ranged Killing Attack; Range: 225; Explosion: +½; Charges: 12, -¼.
  • u-1: 6d6 Concussion Grenade: Stun Only Energy Blast. Range: 225; Versus: PD; Explosion: +½; Charges: 12, -¼.
  • u-1: 6d6 Inciendary Grenade: Energy Blast, Range: 225; Versus: ED; Explosion: +½; Charges: 12, -¼
  • u-1: Smoke Grenade: Darkness (Smell, Sight, 3″ radius); Range: 225; Charges: 4, -¼; Continuing Charges: 1 Minute, -3 levels.
  • u-1: 3d6 Tangler Grenade: Entangle (DEF 3): Range: 225; Explosion: +½; Charges: 12, -¼.
• +4 level w/Grenades (10 CP).

The Grenade Launcher isn’t a very powerful weapon by Hero System standards – but it’s reasonably versatile surprisingly accurate at hitting a target hex (that telekinetic control again), and is great for dealing with crowds of mooks.

Missile Launcher / Anti-Tank Weapon

• Multipower (60-pt reserve); Generic Limitation (Missles Only): -½ (24 CP).
  • u-2: 4d6 Shaped Charge Missile Killing Attack (RKA); Range: 300; Charges: 16, +0.
  • u-2: 12d6 Plasma Jet Missile Fire Energy Blast; Range: 300; Versus: ED; Charges: 16, +0.
  • u-2: 8d6 Inciendary Energy Blast: Range: 300; Versus: ED; Explosion: +½; Charges: 16, +0.

The Missile Launcher is one of the most powerful conventional personal weapons around, but is – of course – meant to target vehicles. Trying to shoot people is surprisingly hard. Normal missile launchers don’t usually have forty-eight missiles available, but once again, magic.

Confronted with a hostile army, Blueblood has opted to learn a spell to let him deploy the equivalent of his own platoon. It isn’t – and really can’t be – enough to handle an army, but it should be useful in a variety of lesser situations.

Eclipse d20 – Dweomer, Thaumaturgy, and Wizardry

I was playing around with ‘what would a high level dweomer based primary caster look like and blanked. I was able to maybe get something somewhat workable by multiplying what the Karthos build had but…

I generally understand how the system is supposed to work, but what a ‘dweomer wizard’ looks like is something that I don’t really know. I feel that I could probably design a specific character, but would likely require frustrating fiddling around with no real ‘baseline’ for how much mana to buy etc.

Could a dweomer based caster do something similar to what the Runesmith does with making Lerandors Rule spells just based off a single skill (since the descriptions for making a fireball with Lerandor’s Rule seem to indicate that there are a number of essentially “metamagic adding effects”) and what skill a dweomer user would use for that (spellcraft, the relevant dweomer skill?)?

-Jirachi

The most basic question here is what should a high level Dweomer-based caster look like if they spend about what a Wizard does on spellcasting?

Well, the Wizard spends 286 CP on Spellcasting over twenty levels – gaining a Wizard Caster Level of Twenty, a total of 180 spell levels plus 34 spell levels for having a high Intelligence (assuming a “24″, which is likely enough for a straight wizard at level twenty) plus cantrips worth of magic to use each day and a selection of spell formula. They have access to an extremely wide array of spells of levels one through nine. On the other hand…

• They have to prepare their spells in advance, and so can only equip themselves with a limited selection of them at the same time.
• They are limited by spell levels, rather than just having a pool of magic to work with.
• They have to maintain and back up their spell books – an expensive proposition.
• They have to find or research and record their spells. This also gets expensive.
• They require components. Dweomerists do to of course, but it’s not so strict.

A moderately optimized twentieth level Dweormist might look something like this:

• 20 Caster Levels, Specialized in Dweomer = 60 CP. Basic, straightforward, and required. It is important to remember that the rule on page ten – “Casting a spell or using a power normally requires a minimum Caster Level equal to (twice its level -1). The Game Master may or may not enforce this. If not, it may be possible to cast very powerful spells with very low Caster Levels and spells with fixed, rather than per-level, effects become far more valuable.” still applies; simply being capable of producing an effect does not guarantee full control or being able to do so safely.
• Rite of Chi with 8 instances of Bonus Uses = 56 CP. That allows the user to recover an average of 115.5 Mana (+1 for natural recovery) each day – enough for a Dweomerist to match the Wizards daily spell allotment.
• 16d6 (52.5) Mana = 90 CP. This is a bit different from a Wizard. Our Dweomerist has just as many spell levels available daily as the Wizard (even more if he or she starts off well-rested), but only has about half of those spell levels available at any given moment; then they’ll have to spend a little time recovering. On the other hand, they won’t have any slots full of spells that aren’t currently useful or which aren’t of high enough level to be useful. This also has a subtle advantage; Mana can be used to power Hysteria or a lot of other special abilities, and so can provide a useful power-up. Having a lot of Mana available is a good thing.
• Dweomer x 2 (12 CP). Select two fields.
• Adept x 2 (12 CP). Select eight of your sixteen available Dweomer skills.
• Mastery (6 CP): May “Take 10” while under pressure for (3 x Int Mod) skills.
• Fast Learner, Specialized in Skills for +2 SP/Level (6 CP).
• Advanced Improved Augmented Bonus (Use Int Mod as a base for your Dweomer skills) 18 CP:
• Advanced Improved Augmented Bonus (Add (Another Attribute Modifier) to (Int Mod) when computing skills points, Specialized for Reduced Cost / the extra skill points may only be used to buy Dweomer skills (9 CP).
• Luck with +12 Bonus Uses, Specialized for Reduced Cost / only for Dweomer (12 CP). The makes sure that your upper-end spells work reliably. That’s more important at low levels than high ones, but will remain reasonably useful. It’s even better if you later buy off the limitation and start using it to make critical saves and such.

That comes out to 281 CP rather than 286 – but that’s quite close enough. Buy a few more skill points or something.

OK: Presuming that same 24 Int and a chosen secondary attribute (probably constitution) boosted to 18, this means 12 “free” skill points per level – with Adept, enough to keep all sixteen available Dweomer skills maxed out. In practice, there will probably be a few that any given character doesn’t use very much, so there will be at least a few skill points left for buying other things, even before buying any. In any case… our twentieth level Dweomerist has a +29 and can “take 10” under pressure for all of his or her Dweomer skills.

So, the Dweomerist can reliably produce “Grandiose” effects in his or her two Dweomer fields at a cost of 5 Mana. They can’t find ways to stack on “free” metamagic like a Wizard, but they’re free to invent their effects on the fly – albeit only within the limits of their skills. They also get first level effects for free at level 16+ – not that huge a benefit at that level, but still pretty convenient.

There are plenty of ways to optimize further of course; even just working with this build. You can Specialize the Mana and Rite of Chi so that they can only be used for Dweomer – but then you miss out on whatever form of natural magic you would have selected and lose all of the versatility that comes of working with a Mana pool. Of course, once you go that far… you might as well go with TommyNihil’s suggestion and use the Wilder progression to power things – although the actual savings aren’t that large in the long run simply because Mana is a very efficient power source for the Dweomer/Thaumaturgy system. You can even use skill boosters to pump up a particular Dweomer skill or two – likely whatever you usually use to attack or defend.

Still, in general, a Wizard has a much wider range of effects available than a Dweomerist, and – given time to prepare – may use metamagic and other boosting effects to prepare far more highly-optimized special tricks. On the other hand, a Dweomerist is using a freeform system. While he or she is admittedly focused on immediate effects and can’t play with metamagic beyond simply making higher-level spells, within his or her fields he or she is free to come up with just the effect needed – often allowing them to get along with clever use of lower-powered magic.

Overall, a Dweomerist is roughly equivalent to a Wizard of similar levels of optimization – but requires more coming-up-with-clever-stuff-on-the-fly than research and pre-planning to play well. On the game masters side, a Dweomerist (unlike a Thaumaturgist using the same mechanics) calls for some pre-planning. After all, if you let a character mess around with – say – nucleokinesis, you’ll need to have a fair idea of how atoms, radiation, and atomic nuclei work in your setting to decide what happens.

Now in actual play, the fields such a character selects are far more important than most of the details of the build. A little more mana? A little less? That kind of thing pales before the differences between a character who’s using Forest Mastery and Weather Control (probably with Leadership to command a force of Ents and forest beasts, a wilderness sanctum, and a few forest-themed tricks) and a Lensman using Psychokinesis, Telepathy, and the Pulp Hero Template to get his own starship in which to bring justice to the galaxy and fight the evil Empire of Boskone – and neither of them will much resemble the often-incorporeal Planewalker who uses Warping and Mysticism as he walks the dimensions in search of the fabled pan-dimensional city of Cynosure.

From my point of view… that’s one of the major advantages of Thaumaturgy and Dweomer. It’s so EASY to build a unique character with highly distinctive abilities that way.

As for Lerandors Rule? Well… according to that, a higher level effect can be built up from lower level ones with the number required being 2 to the (Level to be accomplished – Level of spells being used) power.

So it’s perfectly possible to – say – string together a mere 256 first level spells to duplicate a ninth level effect (presuming 100% efficiency. You might need quite a few more than that if your sequence is less than optimal). Of course, the effect produced by each such spell must be stable enough so that you can build on it with the next spell, must be within the power of a first level effect, must be in an appropriate order, and must fit under one or more of your skills.

Presuming that the player can figure out a sequence of low level spells to accomplish his or her goal… it shouldn’t be more than a ten to twenty page writeup. Once they’ve come up with it, and you’ve had time to go over it, and see what you think what they’ve come up with will actually do… then they can start casting!

I have had players do that – one healer / spiritualist came up with a series of eighteen well-chosen first level spells (as I recall it went something like re-assemble body, preserve body, repair body, restore blood, freshen body (getting to very freshly dead with several repetitions), clear lungs, remove bacteria, oxygenate, feed (adding cellular nutrients), transfuse life force, remove preservation, start heart, restart respiration, contact spirit, let spirit speak through body, enhance body-spirit link (repeated several times), ease spirit travel, and anchor spirit) to push his freeform first level spells up to the equivalent of a fifth level “raise dead” – but that was really quite exceptional. Most players simply do not want to bother with that sort of thing.

Equally unfortunately, you need the proper skill for each individual subspell. You could do a straight Fireball with just the Pyrotics skill. To do one from string of first level spells… you’d probably want something like Summon Fire (Pyrotics), Project Fire (Telekinesis), Boost Spell (Amplification, from Mysticism), and Expand Effect (Spatial Warping, under Warping). There are other sequences that could do the same thing of course – but it’s going to be difficult to squeeze everything together under a single skill.

And I hope that helps!