Next Project: Very, Very Close
The thing about Open Design Kobold Press projects is that they rarely stick with the original title. I think Northlands was called Frozen Empires for a time. Sunken Empires was a latecomer, I think the first title was Shore to Sea. Even things like the Zobeck Gazetteer were originally just "the city book
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1,) An organic flexible magical system, like Words of Power or what Ars Magica uses. Dale McCoy Jr. came up with some undead words of power and asked for suggestions. I suggested that he clean up words of power, explain them clearly, and use that as a foundation. I even said that would be a cool little niche for him. He encouraged me to buy his undead words, and he would see if it was feasible. That was a fair response and I did. Just one time I asked him if he considered what I suggested and he got huffy with me.
I got no use for that.
Still, the idea is attractive to me. I have discussed this with Terraleon, and many people seem to think there is something solid to Words of Power that is just lost in presentation. Like the Ultimate Magic prototype actually works, but it was never really brought up to something release worthy before it was slapped in the book.
2.) I like runes and gyphs too. Especially as a means for non-magical types to use a little magic, not unlike Words of Power. Some attempts to do them seem too much like magic item construction. That's fine, but when players start having to pay for access with Feats, I find them they stick with conventional feats and systems.
3.) Psychic magic. If Paizo doesn't want to move on it, then too bad. Dreamscarred Press has traditional psionics sewn up, but I'd love to see psionics treated as a sorcerer base class (or multiple base classes), that rely on slots and uses per day. That way if I want to make a psychic serpent man or a psychic neh-thalggu I just give them levels in a psychic base class, and it works mechanically like a sorcerer.
For all I know this may be something Paizo is kicking around but I don't know. Design and Development have a goofy relationship over there. Bulmahn recently said he had "65%" interest in ever doing it, even though Development would like to see it.. and they deliberately avoid Vudra because they don't have it.
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Can you explain what you mean by psychic magic vs psionics please.
Ben - agree with you about the userpics. One of the cool things about LJ ;)
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And yes, they have specifically avoided Vudra because that is a place where in Golarion where psionics is canonically more common. And without in-house psionics rules, they're avoiding it. Which makes a strong argument for doing it. Except NOT EVERYBODY actually wants to do it. Hence some of my frustration.
Okay, I am not an expert on DSP's Psionics (and you may be for all I know) but I'll explain enough to contrast that two. DSP uses a point driven system for psionics. So you have psionic powers and you spend an allotment of your psi points to activate and use them. There is an advantage in that you're only limited in how many times you use a power by the number of points you have. You don't have to conserve your points for a high level power if you don't think you need to-you can use lower level powers more often, if that is your choice. Conversely you can use a high level power more often at the risk of emptying out your mental fuel tank quicker. THere are obvious flexibility advantages to that. It is also another thing to keep track of, and it is a unique mechanic that is unlike any other system in the game, save for the monk ki pools, barbarian rage uses, and magus arcane pools. One might argue the "point pool" is not unlike the existing game at all, because of those three cited examples-except those point pools are small. You can tick them off with one or two hands and only a few powers and abilities draw upon them. A psionic point power system has powers in nine tiers and at high levels has a fairly large pool to keep track of.
If Paizo developed their own system they have intimated that they would treat the powers like a vancian system, specifically like a sorcerer. No material components obviously. You would have powers broken into level tiers (like spells, and its worth noting that even DSP's psionics do this), and you would gain access to specific powers which you would choose at certain levels. When you activated a specific power, it would subtracted one of your uses of your powers at that level for the day.
So for example, you might have four 2nd level psionic powers and you have 8 uses of your 2nd level powers per day. Like a sorcerer you would choose which of those 2nd level powers to use at any time, and you could mix and match which ones you use up to 8 times per day. Vancian spell casting implies that you "forget" a magical spell till you study again, but it ALSO implies a number of uses per day. In that respect they would want to adhere to a vancian model.
Why? The argument is that they don't want to introduce a radically different set of mechanics when the existing ones work fairly well right now. If they did this, then psionics would work comparably to arcane and divine magic. In a sense, the largest difference would be in the types of powers available and the flavor. Seamless mechanics.
Now, please no one argue with me personally about this. I am fairly neutral on this. I have not had time to read or study DSP's system, but I have enough people I trust vouch for it that I respect it. I literally just have not had the time to delve into it.
The attractive thing about Paizo's approach is that:
A.) They would actually use it, and therefore I would have some element of psychic powers in the game when I freelance for them. I mean for right or for wrong, I don't foresee them EVER using a large 3PP mechanic. The most they're going to adopt is a bestiary creature. My opinion based on their comments.
B. It probably wouldn't take me very long (like an afternoon or a few days) to adopt the mechanics in my existing games.
As for power point pools. I personally don't see what the f@$ckin' deal is myself. You have to keep track of your hit points, right? Then again, they might feel that one such a pool of points is enough for any game.
Hope this helps!
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I totally want the psychic sorcerer archetype or base class to happen, perhaps with Dreamscarred at the helm. Or maybe it's not their sort of thing.
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