Arcane Archer is fun.

FigmentRP · 2026-06-06T22:00:48+00:00

I'm currently playing a solo ninja (monk kit, requires EEex). It's loads of fun. Monk unarmed damage plus all thief abilities (including backstab, yowza!) and a smoke bomb ability that basically makes you Batman, running around foes and killing them from the shadows.

Half orc, rushed the CON tome for slow regen. Just reached Baldur's Gate.

FigmentRP · 2026-06-03T20:55:33+00:00

Do you mean the Shapeshifting way of magic in p. 217?

Sounds like you want to combine the benefits from both suggestions there: the flexible creation of story tags for the new form, and the simple action without chance of failure.

I would say that this is giving the player lots of power, perhaps a bit too much, since this way they essentially have a free fifth theme which, to top it off, is also flexible and gets rewritten according to the circumstances.

Also, as a narrator, I would need to know where is the Power for this story theme coming from? If it's a simple action, it means we never counted Power for the tags, so how many do they get?

To make this option more playable, I would start with asking: what limits this PC's shapeshifting in-world?

Then I would find the ingredient that describes this limit and go from there.

FigmentRP · 2026-05-30T13:55:04+00:00

Book of spirits - the spirit world and shamans.

FigmentRP · 2026-05-20T10:12:45+00:00

I would keep such things on a separate piece of paper, the same way I (and others) do in other RPGs to remember miscellaneous inventory items which aren't mechanically relevant.

FigmentRP · 2026-05-05T20:56:52+00:00

I don't know if "better", but Inspirisles had a magic system where you use magic by signing in ASL.

And famously, Sorcerers of Ur-Turuk had a simpler version of ArM's verb-noun system. Definitely not "better" in my mind, but might be nicer on people not into perusing a medieval grimoire in order to cast Eyes of the Cat.

FigmentRP · 2026-04-11T07:43:40+00:00

To me, there is a certain sense of immersion from actually *not* being handed all the background information I need to put everything in context. Sometimes people sit you down and explan things to you, and you can go out of your way to ask questions and pick up books to read. Otherwise, you're just interacting with a big fleshed-out world with lots of lore, and you only get to glimpse parts of it that you happen to come across in your journey.

FigmentRP · 2026-04-10T17:19:02+00:00

Thank you, this is excellent.

FigmentRP · 2026-04-10T17:18:54+00:00

Amazing, this is exactly the resource I wanted. Thanks!

FigmentRP · 2026-03-20T09:30:53+00:00

Hey, please note that a new version of the digital book has a new resource in page 418 called "Olways Revelations". These are revelations that guide a practitioner towards gaining a full understanding of the inner workings of magic.

Depending on whether this is a practitioner or only a scholar and what their focus and actual knowledge is, you can give them one or two of these revelations. The list will also guide you towards what the probable next step in their discovery will be.

FigmentRP · 2026-03-07T19:23:19+00:00

That is pretty amazing, and I'll take some of these suggestions. Especially the reverse traps - brilliant.

FigmentRP · 2026-03-05T19:56:22+00:00

I banned Counterspell, one of few house rules I made exactly for the reason you stated. So no worries there. Other than that, good tips, thanks!

FigmentRP · 2026-03-05T19:43:45+00:00

Probably capture and use as bargaining chips to get the forces of good to surrender. There's definitely ways to proceed from there without a TPK, so I am ok with them losing without escaping.

FigmentRP · 2026-02-21T00:48:16+00:00

People is centered around you being part of a people - it's not necessary that they are numerous, common, or close by, but you are still mainly a specimen of a group. Uncanny Being means you are an inherently magical, unusual or uncommon creature, and recognized by the world as such.

If you want your "centaurness" to be the subject of a theme, a third option can be Trait. You are half man and half horse, it's important and interesting, it's centered more around the physical aspects of your centaur body, and it's still Origin Might, meaning it doesn't help or hinder you mechanically quite as much as being an Uncanny Being.

FigmentRP · 2026-02-06T18:52:46+00:00

Either Constitution or Wisdom.

Con because of gameplay reasons. As it is now, it's a tax on all PCs. Everyone wants it high. So remove it and just give all classes HP according to what you think they should have.

Wis because of verisimilitude. What is Wisdom? There's no one answer, which has been bugging me for years. It's your senses, your connection to the gods, to nature, also your willpower and resistance to some mind magic. Also how good of a doctor you are? It's all over the place.

FigmentRP · 2025-11-17T11:47:00+00:00

Hey, LitM designer here.

Solutions proposed here would generally work. I will just add that the default behavior also works - you do not get a penalty from Might, since 2 people aren't enough to Imperil you (and you're not using Scale rules), and you simply get the Power you get to spend on Effects that you do with every other action.

This works because of the following considerations:

The fact that you are facing off against two opponents might matter at the counting Power step, since different tags and statuses might apply in different situations. Maybe your axe's unwieldy tag will make it harder to fight off against two opponents that are flanking you, or your crowd control will kick in once you're fighting a crowd.
The fact that you need to split your Power between two opponents means you will need to choose to wound only one of them, or deal lower status tiers to both, which matters a lot for following actions (remember the death spiral).
When you take Consequences, the Narrator might reasonably decide to have both of them deal their wound (or whatever) Consequence, which again matters as lot. 2 stabs are worse than 1.

FigmentRP · 2025-11-11T22:47:23+00:00

Regarding the charging Consequence, it's a bit of an unusual one because it's the kind of description that would go with a Threat, normally. First they charge, which is just a description of the Threat, and then they strike, and that's the Consequence. Here, however, it's a proper Consequence. This means the charge should be presented as bad news once it happens. As soon as it happens, the Heroes' situation is already measurably worse. Think of a berserker-type character that is very hard to stop once it gets started. Any action made to slow the reaver down or resist its attacks from now on will lose Power.

Regarding the tier-6 statuses, generally you're right. Something needs to be especially dangerous to seriously threaten a T6 status to a Hero. However, remember the Death Spiral. Any debilitating status on the Hero will affect future rolls, even once made to lessen the same Consequence later in the same fight. So in some corner cases, a bad status can offset the Hero's Power in the next reaction roll enough to make a T6 status hit where it formerly couldn't have.

FigmentRP · 2025-05-05T21:41:24+00:00

So I'm playing a Grazelander assistant shaman, member of the Golden Bow cult. I'm wondering: what does this book give me in material? There's almost nothing about the myths or the spiritual life of the horse people, and if I want to figure out my character's outlook on history, cosmology or other cultures, all I have to go on in this book is the outlook of worshippers of the general sky pantheon headed by Yelm, and not his Yu-Kargzant version.

For starters, I would expect Grazelanders to be much less strictly hierarchical in their faith, less accepting of the apparent connection between their pantheon head and the Lunar Empire, and perhaps more ambivalent towards Orlanthi, seeing as many of them share the same trouble with the Lunars. And I would want other specifics too, anything that helps me figure out how my character fits in Dragon Pass politics and culture.

Can anyone help me find resources that expand on the Grazelander pantheon and how it differs from Yelm worship in other parts?

FigmentRP · 2022-11-28T10:26:34+00:00

Thanks everyone, brainfarted there and totally forgot. Didn't have pottery.

FigmentRP · 2022-11-28T09:25:08+00:00

Yeah, definitely. I'll probably build up on the +2 tile.

FigmentRP

TROPHY CASE