A Sword Without a Hilt: A Song of Ice and Fire/D&D 3.5 Crossover
- Thread starter DragonParadox
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- a song of ice and fire a sword without a hilt d&d 3.5 dungeons & dragons 100% high octane dragon fuel ave corvidae battle action dragon diplomacy best sister bureaucromancy delicious soul-stuff dragon dreams come true dragon ta'veren greatest uncle hubris is a coward's word in defiance of gods and men mammon's folly mutually assured mage's disjunction qm murderhobo top tier coatl
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- Who knows?
Been doing rereading but found this. Did we ever find out what happened to the ex Silver Eye head?
[X] Azel
[X] Azel
- Location
- United States
Dishonorably discharged for taking a bargain of that sort.
- Location
- Germany
I think one of the big problems of any system change will be how to handle mages. As it is, the Scholarium is doing it one way and the narrative is doing the complete opposite.
As per Scholarium tables, we still don't have many mages. Maybe a dozen of combat worth.
As per the narrative, we got mages everywhere. The Legion always has them. Every AG-vessel seems to have at least a healer on board. They just pop up whenever it's convenient, while in the sheets, we struggle to get more of them. It's like squeezing blood from a stone.
@DragonParadox, how do you want to resolve this? Massively dial down the appearance of mages in the narrative or can we in the future just assume that the Scholarium has produced enough for whatever scheme we are up to?
As per Scholarium tables, we still don't have many mages. Maybe a dozen of combat worth.
As per the narrative, we got mages everywhere. The Legion always has them. Every AG-vessel seems to have at least a healer on board. They just pop up whenever it's convenient, while in the sheets, we struggle to get more of them. It's like squeezing blood from a stone.
@DragonParadox, how do you want to resolve this? Massively dial down the appearance of mages in the narrative or can we in the future just assume that the Scholarium has produced enough for whatever scheme we are up to?
- Location
- Germany
... why are you just shouting random things today ... ?
- Location
- United States
We should also start tracking clerics. I can only imagine imperial gods want more of their servants out and about in the Imperium. They don't quite mesh well with the Scholarum, but it'd definitely help us to know what we've got to work with.
- Location
- Germany
Yeah, that's the other facet. By law, Clerics are part of the Scholarium, but for some reason, they just never showed up there.
Goldfish
Friendly Spider-Fish Abomination
- Location
- Formerly of the Far Realm
There are actually quite a few combat capable mages now.
We also have Alchemists, Mystics, Clerics, Bards, etc., who can sling some useful spells. Even our Adepts and Hedge Mages can do quite a bit with their more limited magic, especially when augmented by scrolls and reusable magic items like Vials of Efficacious Medicine.
- Location
- United States
Honestly this one is on us. While this is indeed in the legislation, we never asked when it came time to roll for it. And so until now it's just straight up never been tracked.
We can try to get this sorted out in the next update of the Scholarum sheets.
Right now the major gods we've got...
Old Gods
Yss
Merling King
R'hllor
Weeping Lady
Moonsinger Goddess
Zathir
I think that's it in terms of overall relevance? Other gods are either too weak to bother with tracking or not legitimized by Viserys.
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- Location
- Germany
Great. So we can give every Legion one (1) sorcerer.There are actually quite a few combat capable mages now.
We have 38 Sorcerers of 6th level or higher, 23 of them Combat Sorcerers who cast their Fire spells at 11th level or higher, can use Searing Metamagic, and turn into Red Dragon Wyrmlings. The 15 Enchanter Sorcerers have extremely effective CC abilities and all around strong Enchantment spells.
We also have Alchemists, Mystics, Clerics, Bards, etc., who can sling some useful spells. Even our Adepts and Hedge Mages can do quite a bit with their more limited magic, especially when augmented by scrolls and reusable magic items like Vials of Efficacious Medicine.
You see what I mean?
And frankly, it would be good if we could get away from tracking individual mages. One of the big problems of the quest is the insistence to track everything on this granular level.
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Crake
I AM THE STORM THAT IS APPROACHING
- Location
- USA
Hey now, I've only made one non-sequitor statement all day, and one shitpost meme. Though that other one might have seemed like a non-sequitor on top of a shit post since it's a rather American-centric reference.
Goldfish
Friendly Spider-Fish Abomination
- Location
- Formerly of the Far Realm
I get your point, but we could easily assign more mages to each Legion, especially if we stop using our Wizards and Archivists for crafting. That would reduce our monthly crafting capacity somewhat, but not catastrophically.
RIght now, we could assign a 6th level Combat Sorcerer, Enchanter Sorcerer, and Wizard to every Legion, along with a mix of 5th/6th level Sorcerers, Wizards, Mystics, Archivists, and Adepts. Sure, compared to thousands of soldiers that doesn't seem like a lot, but they would still form a solid core of magical talent and knowledge for each Legion. They could also bring a number of promising Scholarium students with them for practical field experience.
We are about to have the entirety of Westeros from which to recruit nascent magical talent, we're going to be opening one or more new Scholarium branches (Roose's, at least), and the entire population of SD just got a magical shot in the arm from R'hllor which DP indicated will lead to more people awakening their magic. We also can't forget that King's Landing is probably now home to thousands of newly awakened potential mages after Viserys' earlier display, many of whom will gravitate to Imperial service (hopefully as Imperial Clerics).
All of this taken together means the next several months should see a drastic increase in mages in the Scholarium. DP is going to allow Battle School participants to gain experience toward leveling up, too. I'm going to put my notes together and do a preliminary write up for that this weekend so everyone can get a better idea of what it will involve.
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- Location
- Germany
Yeah. Look. But what if we just... abstract all this micromanagement away? Because the harsh truth is that nobody cares. Not even DP, or we wouldn't have mages keep popping up where they should not be.
It's just cruft that we keep around due to sunk costs and tradition at this point.
Goldfish
Friendly Spider-Fish Abomination
- Location
- Formerly of the Far Realm
I enjoy seeing the numbers gradually go up (the Scholarium is actually pretty damned new in the grand scheme of things, yet we've trained nearly 5,000 mages of one stripe or another), but I'm not so attached to the system that I would argue to keep tracking mages so closely if no one else is interested.
Crake
I AM THE STORM THAT IS APPROACHING
- Location
- USA
If we stop tracking mages and just have an arbitrary amount of them, what does that do to our crafting capacity? Can we just dump several million IM on crafting now?
Or how about we keep the narrative weight of that slow steady build up, but now that we've crowned ourselves Imperator and this side of the world looks a bit more stable, we get an influx of numerous mages capable of enchantment, all very willing and able to take state contracts? We didn't open ourselves up too immigration from other dimensions for nothing.
Or how about we keep the narrative weight of that slow steady build up, but now that we've crowned ourselves Imperator and this side of the world looks a bit more stable, we get an influx of numerous mages capable of enchantment, all very willing and able to take state contracts? We didn't open ourselves up too immigration from other dimensions for nothing.
Goldfish
Friendly Spider-Fish Abomination
- Location
- Formerly of the Far Realm
Easiest thing to do would have a monthly roll to determine how many new crafters we bring into our service or train up. DP could just roll a die and use some simple bonuses based on population size and the number of active Scholarium branches to come up with new crafters.
- Location
- Germany
There will still be plenty of Number Go Up.
The basic idea I have is to switch to a mana system with everything, so that we no longer need a thousands actions, a hundred characters and way too many dice for them to actually matter.
Everything just produces points that are spent on actions automatically and turn-votes just are about what actions with what priorities are to be spent on.
So the Scholarium would produce, say, 1 Mage Point per branch and month. We need 3 Mage Points to raise a new Legion, 2 MP for a new Scholarium branch, or we cash out 1 MP to get 2 new crafters.
- Pronouns
- He
We also have a bunch of Golden Shield deserters.
They might also contribute to the war, no?
They might also contribute to the war, no?
Shifting how we handle mages would also influence the narrative, which should be taken into account. There's a world of difference between being a legion mage and being the legion's mage. If we decide to stick with the current system for training mages maybe we should change how we treat them in terms of prestige.
- Location
- E-Girl Deseret
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Walking, talking artillery platforms tend to do that.
- Location
- Germany
Another option in regards to crafting would be to streamline that process as well. Abstract away the bulk of the crafting, baring extra special stuff such as Lya making high-powered artifacts, so that instead of having to account for every nitty gritty detail of enchanting, we also just throw "1 point of Enchanting Capacity" at something.
It would make things both easier for us (specialty enchanting like Constructs would be less bottle-necked, due to interchangeable capacity points) and harder (likely to overspend for many things due to less precise resource allocation).
The first part can be largely explained away as finally getting some rituals to work that can replicate things like the Myrish Glassblowers Guild does for Glass Golems or how Dragonpens can self-replicate. It would be narratively congruent if it is just off-handedly mentioned over the coming months without drawing attention to the system change being the actual source. On the other side, we could just abstract away the enchanting for a Legion as "requires 2 EC" while a new Dauntless costs "50 EC" and some infrastructure project that uses magic needs "1 EC". It would free us up from having to track individual Braziers, Mirror Vision Mirrors and all that stuff and get us to a point where people other than Goldfish can propose things that require crafting time.
I'm also strongly considering to cap the Forges capacity to remove the incentive to dump any extraneous resources into them to churn out macro-units of forged creatures to replace our entire military. The new system I'm thinking of would strongly incentivice this.
It would make things both easier for us (specialty enchanting like Constructs would be less bottle-necked, due to interchangeable capacity points) and harder (likely to overspend for many things due to less precise resource allocation).
The first part can be largely explained away as finally getting some rituals to work that can replicate things like the Myrish Glassblowers Guild does for Glass Golems or how Dragonpens can self-replicate. It would be narratively congruent if it is just off-handedly mentioned over the coming months without drawing attention to the system change being the actual source. On the other side, we could just abstract away the enchanting for a Legion as "requires 2 EC" while a new Dauntless costs "50 EC" and some infrastructure project that uses magic needs "1 EC". It would free us up from having to track individual Braziers, Mirror Vision Mirrors and all that stuff and get us to a point where people other than Goldfish can propose things that require crafting time.
I'm also strongly considering to cap the Forges capacity to remove the incentive to dump any extraneous resources into them to churn out macro-units of forged creatures to replace our entire military. The new system I'm thinking of would strongly incentivice this.
egoo
Totally Not Creating Problems Where None Existed
- Location
- Russia
I'm all for summarizing the overly-detailed crafting along with everything else.
I point to the RA we set almost all the Scholarum branches at starting this month.
It's the ill-defined "do something useful, something with crafting reagents maybe".
Let's just say the Scholarum switches from using its mages for research-centric tasks on the behalf of the government, to crafting.
Boom, fluff done.
And the expenses, I can't care less about, frankly.
Our economy can take it.
Period.
Edit: I'm also all for capping the Forges. I've proposed that before, and been blocked by DP of all the people.
They are too OP, given the ear-infinite finances, even by thr standards of Blood War-grade conflict, as they are now.
I point to the RA we set almost all the Scholarum branches at starting this month.
It's the ill-defined "do something useful, something with crafting reagents maybe".
Let's just say the Scholarum switches from using its mages for research-centric tasks on the behalf of the government, to crafting.
Boom, fluff done.
And the expenses, I can't care less about, frankly.
Our economy can take it.
Period.
Edit: I'm also all for capping the Forges. I've proposed that before, and been blocked by DP of all the people.
They are too OP, given the ear-infinite finances, even by thr standards of Blood War-grade conflict, as they are now.
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