Spes Magna Games

As my summer vacation winds down, I’m finally getting some new products on the Interwebz for you to purchase. This week, I’ve finished Ean Illiam’s Cavern Stores for Dungeon World and Aquatic Depths & Denizens for Swords & Wizardry. The links in that last sentence take you to DriveThruRPG where you can read the product descriptions. The rest of this post includes content excerpts from both PDFs.

From Ean Illiam’s Cavern Stores

Groitzarr’s Vile Menagerie (1 weight)
This common bamboo bird cage holds five scabrous, repulsive birds, each about the size of a parakeet. They perch silently, their rheumy eyes watching their surroundings with disturbing intensity. When you feed one of these foul birds a drop of your blood, roll+CHA. *On a 10+, the bird squawks out a clear, useful prediction of the near future. *On a 7-9, the bird’s prophecy is puzzling and riddlesome. Take a cumulative -1 forward each time to you use the birds more than once per day.

Custom Move: Dangerous Woods
When you act as scout while traveling through the woods near the village, roll+WIS. *On a 10+, choose 2. *On a 7-9, choose 1. If you’re known to have harmed local fey creatures, take -1 ongoing.

* No unwelcome attention is attracted.
* No equipment turns up missing.
* No clues to the true nature of the trouble are discovered.

Mastiff
Thick necked, solid skulled. Blunt muzzles. Crushing jaws and sharp teeth. Ean’s mastiffs are every bit as well-trained as his guards.

Group
Bite (d8 damage) | 6 HP | 1 Armor | Close
Instinct: To obey the master

* Drag down a foe
* Go for the throat

From Aquatic Depths & Denizens

Combat in Three Dimensions
Combatants who fight while swimming may jockey for advantageous position. Whenever an attacker wants to attack with a positional advantage, the attacker and the defender both make saving throws.

* Attacker Succeeds, Defender Fails: The attacker gains a +2 attack roll bonus.
* Defender Succeeds, Attacker Fails: The attack suffers a -2 attack roll penalty.
* Both Fail or Both Succeed: The attacker gains no advantage or penalty.

The Referee should describe the aquatic ballet of violence as attacker and defender push and twist against each other and the water as the attacker attempts to gain a momentary advantage.

Bahari
Squat, thick-skinned, hairless, spotted by barnacle-like growths, Bahari enjoy a +4 bonus on saving throws against poison and a +1 bonus to Armor Class due to their tough hides. They can see in the dark (darkvision) to a limit of 60 feet and have a natural swim speed of 6 and an out-of-water movement rate of 6. Bahari who are player characters may be Fighters, Thieves, or multi-classed Druid/Fighters or Fighter/Thieves.

Those Bahari who are not player characters might have abilities and limitations wildly different from those of an adventuring Bahar. The nature of the Bahar race as a whole is entirely the province of the Referee, and might include non-player characters of any class.

Jet
Spell Level Magic-User, 3rd-level; Range touch; Duration 1 turn/level + 1d6 turns

This spell triples the recipient’s swim speed for its duration. The Referee secretly rolls 1d6 additional turns; the recipient does not know exactly how long Jet will last.

Lycanthrope, Wereshark
HD 7; AC 1 (18); Atks bite (2d8), weapon (1d8); SV 9; Special breathe water, lycanthropy, hit only by magic or silver weapons; MV 0//18; AL C; CL/XP 8/800

Weresharks appear have humanoid torsos and powerful arms topped by the head of a shark. The shark’s distinctive dorsal fin grows from a wereshark’s back. Instead of legs, weresharks have a shark’s powerful tail. These monsters prowl shallow waters for prey. Weresharks can control normal sharks.

Tags: Dungeon World, magic items, monsters, spells, Swords & Wizardry

Earlier this week, I was working with a student during reading tutoring. Our topics for the day were idioms and common sayings, such as “It’s raining cats and dogs!” or “The cheese done slid off of his cracker.” (The latter must be said with an accent appropriate to the U.S.’s South.) One of the expressions that popped up during the lesson was “lick of sense”, which made me think of a possible spell to be created for use in a game.

Or, in this case, three different games.

Lick of Sense

For Barbarians of Lemuria:

Magnitude: First
Cost: 4
Requirements: Obvious technique
Minimum Cost: 2
Difficulty: Tricky (-1)

This spell’s arcane lick removes negative mental effects, including flaws that affect mind actions, so long as those negative mental effects are either natural (meaning innate to the target or the result of mundane circumstances such as poison) or are caused by magical effects no stronger than a first magnitude spell. Negative mental effects not innate to the target are removed entirely. Mental flaws (such as Fear of Fire) are suppressed for about an hour.

For Dungeon World:

Level: Cleric 3, Ongoing

You give your target’s skin a blessed lick. One of the target’s mental debilities is immediately removed. For the spell’s duration, the target takes +1 forward to avoid negative mental effects. While this spell is ongoing, you take a -1 to cast a spell.

For Swords & Wizardry:

Spell Level: Cleric, 3rd Level
Range: Touch
Duration: See below

With a lick, the target’s negative mental effects, including magically inflicted ones, are removed. For the next hour, the target enjoys a +1 bonus to saving throws against negative mental effects.

Tags: Barbarians of Lemuria, Dungeon World, spells, Swords & Wizardry

At long last, I purchased Simon Washbourne’s Barbarians of Lemuria. I first encountered this game as its free version. I first played BoL at OwlCon 2013, and I really enjoyed the convention scenario and the system itself.

BoL includes a magic system that is both flexible and customizable. While most magicians appear in sword & sorcery fiction as villains, BoL does offer magician as a heroic career for player characters. Spells cost Arcane Power, which starts equal to the character’s magician rank plus 10. Spells fall into four categories: Cantrips, First Magnitude, Second Magnitude, and Third Magnitude.

A magician casts a spell by deciding on the effect, which determines the spell’s category. The higher the category, the more Arcane Power the spell costs and higher the difficulty of casting the spell (success determined by rolling 2d6 + Mind + magician rank – difficulty modifier and trying to equal to beat a 9).

Cantrips accomplish minor tasks, such as making a coin vanish or causing a rope to slither up a wall. First Magnitude spells are utility spells “that allow the sorcerer to perform activities that anyone with the right training and equipment could manage.” These spells can inflict damage, such as a blast of flame, or let the magician climb like a spider. Cantrip and First Magnitude spells are likely the only types of spells that will commonly see use in the game. Second and Third Magnitude spells are capable of truly mighty effects, such as mind control, destroying a building, or causing a volcano to rise out of the earth and erupt.

All spells except Cantrips require additional casting requirements, such as possession of a special item (like an ancient tome), rare ingredients (like the tongue of a mythical beast), or a ritual sacrifice (including even human sacrifice for Third Magnitude spells). The magician can pile on additional casting requirements to lower the spell’s Arcane Power cost, but each category of spell has a minimum Arcane Power cost regardless of how many additional casting requirements are applied. For example, a First Magnitude spell cost a minimum of 1 Arcane Power, whereas a Third Magntitude spell costs at least 11 Arcane Power.

Here’s a sample Third Magnitude spell to go along with the creepy pictures of spiders taking over the countryside in Australia:

Plague of Spiders
Cost: 15
Requirements: Personal ordeal. The caster must immerse himself in a pit full of biting spiders, crushing and eating hundreds of the spiders as they bite him, in order to achieve the right frame of mind for casting.
Minimum Cost: 11
Difficulty: Demanding (-6)

This horrible spell summons forth millions of spiders that swarm across the land for miles, blanketing everything in their path with webs. Individually, the spiders prove little threat (Size Tiny, Damage 1, Lifeblood 1, Move 15 ft.). They are, however, extremely venomous. The spider’s venom forces a Tricky task roll using Strength to resist or else suffer 1 LB each round until unconscious at 0 LB. This unconscious victim must then make a Hard task roll using Strength to avoid death. A physician can treat the poison, but doing so is Tricky.

Tags: Barbarians of Lemuria, spells

Welcome to Rantz’s Fair Multitude! This Old-School game supplement offers 30 pages of ideas to challenge and reward your players. Among the multitude, you’ll find the following:

* Nine new magic items, including Demon Cymbals and Nails of Prynn
* More than 25 new monsters (with plot hooks), including the book golem, hungry ghosts, and the Seekers of the Eternal Flame
* Six special places you can drop into your campaign, including the Bridge of the Damned and Stadgaar Manor
* Eight new spells, including Arcasparv’s Doomful Gullet and Valfoxell’s Adventitious Pretense
* Brief descriptions for a 12 deity pantheon, including Cro, the God of Truth, Chaos, and Opposites

Rantz’s Fair Multitude can be purchased for $1.50 at DriveThruRPG with special discount.

Tags: monsters, place of power, spells, Spes Magna Products, Swords & Wizardry

It’s been a while since I posted a new spell. As I’m going down a list of randomly generated Vancian spell names, here’s what’s next:

Biderukic’s Dense Salamander
Spell Level: Magic-User, 5th Level
Range: NA
Duration: 6 rounds

The caster summons 1d4 dense salamanders, who serve him until slain or until the duration of the spell expires. The dense salamanders do not appear immediately; there is a delay of 5 rounds before they appear.

Dense salamanders are sluggish, somewhat intelligent creatures of the elemental planes of fire. They appear to be large snake-like beasts with tough scales that give off dangerous heat. The very touch of a dense salamander deals 1d4 hit points of fire damage, and they wrap their tails around foes to cause an additional 1d4 points of crushing damage per round as the victim writhes in the deadly heat of the serpentine coils.

Dense Salamander: HD 2+2; AC 4 [15]; Atk touch and constrict (1d4 + 1d4 heat); Move 9; Save 16; AL C; CL/XP 4/120; Special: constrict, immune to fire, heat.

Tags: monsters, spells, Swords & Wizardry, Vancian magic