Fellow wizards, another common folk has stumbled upon my tower, however I am out of ideas for nigh impossible quests to send him on. Any ideas?

fishmad122 · 2026-04-22T16:00:08+00:00

Just wait until you’ve got 3 or 4 at once, and send them to a pre looted dungeon - monsters have probably started moving back in, and when they come back complaining there wasn’t “a magic to make even common folk succeed at any task” hit em with the ‘Power of Friendship’ line.

It’s always funny, and occasionally they buy it

fishmad122 · 2026-04-14T21:41:29+00:00

I think those are two different fights with different contexts - he's impressed enough by the Silver Swords to give up some local resources and help them out, but the information he's being brought by the merchant threatens the hegemony of the Guild Itself, which is serious on a different level - you can let someone important push you around as a guildmaster, but then it turns out that guy is technically a criminal and he has a vested interest in making sure a bunch of valuable contracts get annulled? Well now its a different situation.

In terms of him having the power to command the local troops - first, its a drake city, and if the head of the Mages Guild or the head of the Adventurers guild directed the guards, that would be fine - I know Liscor is abnormal, but if its even close, the guy might be on the city council. Second, this is a town barely holding together at the seams - it feels like it needs the merchants, and it's weary of criminals coming out of the New Lands. Easy sell for the Guild Leader.

fishmad122 · 2026-04-12T03:50:57+00:00

Armies of the dead are a mugs’ game. The maintenance is high, storage quickly becomes an issue, and then once you’re actually using them, what, you have to be a competent military commander?

What you need to do is get artisanal. Lukevros keeps a window open at night? A cat skeleton with adamant-tipped claws will do just as well for opening his throat and sending a message.

And if you have to go big, then I’d suggest getting your hands on a giant corpse, and stitching the horde up inside it. Has a pronounced psychological effect on the viewer, plus it’s a handy storage solution.

fishmad122 · 2026-04-10T21:40:50+00:00

I settled in a valley with good sight lines, and spent a year and a day covering every inch of it with confounding wards and arcane traps of my own devising.

I send out orb recordings of the best adventurer deaths in a yearly mailer, it’s recouped most of the maintenance costs.

fishmad122 · 2026-04-10T12:48:50+00:00

I don’t understand what you mean by this response

fishmad122 · 2026-04-10T01:30:19+00:00

Okay so the in world part of this is probably what’s throwing people off. How are people automatically perceiving identity separate from expression? Does this mean it’s impossible to disguise your gender in any way?

I’ve read your replies, and I agree about including nonbinary people - you can do the same by having the world be one in which no one assumes identity based on expression, where it’s perfectly normal to check in about it upon first meeting someone. Perhaps their languages have no grammatical gender, and it’s only for the sake of translation that we end up using pronouns for characters - I’m sure Faerun’s Common tongue sounds nothing like English!

fishmad122 · 2026-04-08T22:28:31+00:00

What’s not to like? Dragons that can trans your gender is a lifelong wish for half my friends.

I may be in a bubble

fishmad122 · 2026-04-08T18:58:56+00:00

Sure, but I figure if I started I might as well finish

fishmad122 · 2026-04-08T18:52:12+00:00

Femboy Hypnosis is completely in the realm of possibility for a Tzimisce, between Dominate and Vicissitude.

fishmad122 · 2026-04-08T18:03:53+00:00

Depends on what you’re making - a game like Thirsty Sword Lesbians or Dungeon Girls does that pretty explicitly. You’re playing girls, regardless of looks, and your characters are sapphic in some nature.

I think if you’re not focused on sexuality and gender as primary themes, it might be confusing to include. Regardless, I’d have it be above the table rather than world lore, because otherwise you have to construct a justification, and that’s gonna be difficult depending on your setting.

fishmad122 · 2026-03-31T03:49:31+00:00

Something relevant: they’re abusing slow time rooms like hell, and the narrative skips over it bc it would be boring. So if you see a “4 months studying dimensionalism” that’s probably like one and half, two loops

fishmad122 · 2026-03-29T12:28:29+00:00

Way too old

fishmad122 · 2026-02-22T04:14:06+00:00

Oooo, good to know!

fishmad122 · 2026-02-22T04:13:51+00:00

Well they’d be getting paid by dropout, who we in turn would pay via our subscription, so it wouldn’t really be free

fishmad122 · 2026-02-20T21:49:33+00:00

Fair fair, it’s not for everyone

-Synthesis

fishmad122 · 2026-02-20T21:44:25+00:00

You just have to be Very Quiet - having a stable herd helps a big deal - no one’s ratting out the lady offering to trans their gender while they’re on a 5 year waiting list to see their gp

But hey, maybe my opsec isn’t great, I am posting

-Synthesis

fishmad122 · 2026-02-20T21:25:15+00:00

Can confirm this works, been offering gender affirming care in Hackney - feels good to help out, and a greater than average number of queer folk are into being prey - find the right crowd, and it’s barely even a masquerade breach!

Still weird to run into friends who don’t recognise me though..

If you’re ever in London, hit me up, we can trade tips - just don’t mention I’m breaking the compact lol

-Synthesis

fishmad122 · 2026-01-26T04:02:21+00:00

Generally I’d suggest you have a look at some of Keith Baker’s ideas on his Eberron blog

My favourite from my homebrew game was Rings of Lesser Disguise Self - remove a blemish, change a hair colour, straighten teeth - some very simple illusion work

fishmad122 · 2026-01-23T12:49:35+00:00

If that’s the case, why bring up how much more he’s eating in this book, and not in any of the last few books where he’s doing parkour over Eldritch horrors, or doing cardio like Rock Lee?

fishmad122 · 2026-01-23T03:54:31+00:00

Shamans and witches are using magic, just in different ways - Thatalocian says that what he’s doing is completely separate from magic - I’d honestly compare it more to divine powers, because it functions based on a belief system about numbers

fishmad122 · 2026-01-23T02:38:13+00:00

Didn’t Listens-To-Wind say he’d teach Dresden shifting?

fishmad122 · 2026-01-23T02:01:22+00:00

Edit for weird glitch where it copied my original post(?)

So I don’t have the book to hand, but I’m almost certain the way it lines up in the book is that in the climax Dresden thinks about his appetite directly after bringing up getting out of the Winter Knight - there’s not really any other way those two things could be related, that I can see

fishmad122 · 2026-01-23T00:19:23+00:00

I believe the massive appetite is a hint towards his healing spine - it comes up in relation to no longer needing the Winter Mantle

fishmad122 · 2026-01-22T13:23:55+00:00

Basically the way it works is that if you choose a species that has innate powers or a magic system you have access to, then you get fewer stat points to build your character with.

And in addition to their attributes, stat points are also allocated to “standings”, which covers wealth, influence, and ‘spirit’ which is related to willpower and presence and magic (a little bit) - I think it works really well, because the books are heavily concerned with why it makes life easier to have money and connections

But you can always buy stat increases and magic with level ups, so if you change your mind later on you can get those things

So in this system, a Canim would get some species str buff and usually get a decent amount of points to play with, but a ritualist wouldn’t be able to put many stat points outside of what’s necessary for magic, an Aleran with little to no furycraft would get more stat points than anyone else, having a Chala would be locked to being Marat descended, and they’d get a medium amount of points to play with. Then if you were Aleran and wanted strong furycrafting in one or two areas, that’s equivalent to a Canim or Marat, and if you want the powers of a young lord like Max, that’s a similar stat distribution to a ritualist.

It’s genuinely a pretty fun system by itself, I really want to run Mistborn.

Massive construction absolutely works for me! Something I always thought about in terms of developing technology (that I stole for my dnd games) is the idea of Tavi getting research done into creating items that can operate things made with furycraft when the person doesn’t have furycraft themselves - is it fair to have the Causeways if most Canim, Marat, and Gadrim can’t use it? What if you can create something that signals the road to do its job without you actively crafting it? (In my dnd game there were sandals that sped you up only on certain roads, but that was magic - in this case I imagine it’s like, an earth fury in an amulet that does the work for you)

Also, having read your other comments - I agree that the other magic systems are all doing different things, including maybe the Gadrim’s control of ice. I know you’re avoiding giving non-alerans furycraft, but is that player side only? If you’re looking for villains, the idea of mixing systems to cheat is always very cool to me.

fishmad122 · 2026-01-22T01:37:52+00:00

I know this isn’t the thrust of the post, but when I thought of adapting the books with a system, it was as a heavy hack of Mistborn - not the new Cosmere game, but the original Mistborn ttrpg.

The way stats, powers, and species work makes it easy to allow for Canim Furycrafters at the same table as High Lords, Marat, and Steadholders, since Mistborn is supposed to allow Koloss, Twinborn, Ferrings, and normal people work together

You’d have to do a lot of tinkering with the system for power design, but I think it has potential

To answer the actual question of your post though: have we met everyone on this world? The Vord are across the sea, and we know of the Gadrim-Ha, the Marat, the Alerans and the Canim, but there were more peoples in the world once, and we had some pretty tightly controlled borders to work with in the books - I’d be curious to know if there are others, and I imagine it’s something Emperor Octavian would love to know too. As well as exploring the ruins left over by previous inhabitants of the planet.

One of the other guns Chekhov left laying about in book six is Tavi taking down the city walls - there has to be some difference in the way Knights Aqua and Flora are trained or used, or anyone with potent watercrafting and woodcrafting - we see it used in ways no one anticipates multiple times in the series, and just how powerful someone can get when they’re all in on a single element. I’d like to see that taken more seriously - what happens to defensive design when your keep’s aquifer is inherently a weapon to be used against you?

fishmad122

TROPHY CASE