Monte Cook's Arcana Evolved

[Kensei27]

I just picked up this book last week at the exuberant suggestion of a friend of mine. I'm not sure how familiar anyone here is with the Arcana Unearthed/Arcana Evolved line, but has anyone done a HERO conversion of this stuff?

[Killer Shrike]

Re: Monte Cook's Arcana Evolved

 

Send me the books and Ill do a conversion.

[MorpheousXO]

Re: Monte Cook's Arcana Evolved

 

Ooh! A killer shrike conversion would rock! (now if I knew what this Arcana Evolved thingie was other than a d20 core book...)

[Thia Halmades]

Re: Monte Cook's Arcana Evolved

 

Arcana Evolved is an expansion/revision of Arcana Unearthed, Monte Cook's home brewed campaign setting. Like most of his stuff, it would work better in a system with a defined framework, like HERO, than it ever does in d20 where I occassionally get the feeling he throws balance straight out the window.

 

It has the usual race/class packages, but its magic system (largely runic) deviates heavily from the norms. He also has a Feat (HERO = Talent/Perquisite) system attached to his magic system. Simply:

 

* Learning magic is easy; anyone can take the class and learn the "simple" spells from that class group.

 

* You must take a Feat to learn the 'Complex' magics of a given level. A mage could learn 3rd level Complex magic - this confers no benefit whatsoever to any other level.

 

* You must take a Feat to learn a single 'Exotic' spell - these have the most bang for the buck, generally speaking.

 

The setting is ritual heavy, and he introduces some Monte-specific races, which are really only interesting in their definitions, mechanically I was never "wowed."

[Chuckg]

Re: Monte Cook's Arcana Evolved

 

Addendum: The dedicated spellcaster class ("Magister") is the only class that gets complex spells for free.

 

As you say, there are also "exotic" spells, aka "the REALLY powerful stuff". You spend a feat (yes, even a magister) to learn exotic spells at one feat per spell. This is intended to stop the 'every spellcaster of a given level has the Rarest Spell Of All, instead of only 1-2 in the game world having it' issue.

 

Personally, I think AE is one of the best d20 fantasy conversions out there, and God knows I love his approach to spell design over WotCs.(*)

 

Of course, if I ever try to run high fantasy again, I'm not using d20 mechanics, I'm using something else. So I look upon AE as a source of stealable ideas, not as a setting to use.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

(*) Monte Cook believes that a 20th-level arcane spellcaster *should* be able to toast a small army, even if he has to expend an 8th-9th level spell to do it. (Check out 'Massive Devastation' sometime -- hoody hoo!) D&D 3.0+ whacked all area spells with the nerf bat, to where there's no way to get the buggers above 30-40 ft. radius, and that's with feats.

[Thia Halmades]

Re: Monte Cook's Arcana Evolved

 

This is why I loved Steve's Grimoire II - it covers "battlefield magic" instead of simply "combat magic" which is what most people practice. I have to concede the point that a powerful enough caster should, in fact, be able to hose a small armed force with a couple of words. If we're talking about the genre of High Fantasy, then that's precisely what we should expect.

 

My casters aren't quite that powerful, but I'd been looking for a ritual magic system for ages. HERO lets me build one with my eyes shut. Another point for HERO.

[Curufea]

Re: Monte Cook's Arcana Evolved

 

Personally I'd like to see non-combat magic. Every spell in D20 is geared towards adventuring and combat - it would be nice to see what everyone else in the setting does with magic.

[Old Man]

Re: Monte Cook's Arcana Evolved

 

That's part of the setting. All wizards must be adventuring warriors/killers. You can use magic to fry an army or explore a dungeon, but even the most advanced archmage is helpless to bake a loaf of bread or fix a wagon wheel.

[Curufea]

Re: Monte Cook's Arcana Evolved

 

But it doesn't give folk ideas on how to incorporate magic into day-to-day life.

 

Rolemaster does, though. I have many of the earlier edition books that include things like midwifery spell lists and things...

[Kensei27]

Re: Monte Cook's Arcana Evolved

 

I'll probably end up doing some kind of conversion work myself, although it could take a while with the ever-present threat of real life.

 

On the other hand, I agree that a Killer Shrike conversion would be great to see. Maybe you and I can work something out, KS. If anyone wants more info on the setting and concept, you can always find it on his website.

[Teflon Billy]

Re: Monte Cook's Arcana Evolved

 

But it doesn't give folk ideas on how to incorporate magic into day-to-day life.

 

Rolemaster does, though. I have many of the earlier edition books that include things like midwifery spell lists and things...

Actually, I've found that whenever someone attempts to do non-combat spells this is all they end up writing up and nothing more (this and dealing with mundane aches and pains of the non-pregnant). Booooring!

 

There is much more to life than a woman giving birth or an aching back, thank you. Notice the last few knack/cantrip/mini-spell threads on these boards for examples of this.

 

Maybe if we could define some broad categories that explicitly go beyond narrow issues of medicine, then it might get people's mental juices flowing on the topic. Any ideas?

 

TB

[Mutant for Hire]

Re: Monte Cook's Arcana Evolved

 

Well, fertility, contraception and midwife spells are important.

 

There is some overlap with combat spells. Healing magic, anti-disease magic is also a good one. Injuries and disease are a fact for everyone, not just warriors.

 

A lot of magic that you would expect a village warlock/witch to know would be divination magic. For example, the fertility of the soil. If a cow/sheep/whatever is lost, how to find it. What the weather will be for the next few weeks. Is spring here or is there going to be a turn of bad weather? Spells to determine if someone is honest or lying, oath spells that cause bad things to happen to someone who goes back on an agreement.

[Curufea]

Re: Monte Cook's Arcana Evolved

 

Mercantile spells of course..

 

Anything to do with transport or communication would be of great interest to the 95% of the population not in the military

[Teflon Billy]

Re: Monte Cook's Arcana Evolved

 

Well' date=' fertility, contraception and midwife spells are important.[/quote'] But not that important. At least not from the angle of interesting story telling. Yes, have them, but lets move on. Like I said, there is much more to life than to most sentient life than producing offspring (however important that it may be).

 

There is some overlap with combat spells. Healing magic, anti-disease magic is also a good one. Injuries and disease are a fact for everyone, not just warriors.

Again, medicine, it's been done.

 

How about copying of books, making of rugs (and otherlabor intensive products), or currency that can automatically make change (dollar coin that can divide into 4 quarters)

 

A lot of magic that you would expect a village warlock/witch to know would be divination magic. For example, the fertility of the soil.If a cow/sheep/whatever is lost, how to find it. What the weather will be for the next few weeks. Is spring here or is there going to be a turn of bad weather?

All under one topic, agriculture, done. What other topics in life could be enhanced by magic, particularly in ways that are not just replacing something that a human could do by labor (Under Mercantilism for example, a spell that that solves the traveling salesman problem instantly would be very useful for saving money on travel) It still seems that these spell ideas keep ending just being variations of the same thing. Personally having 15 different spells to "Ease Childbirth" or "Increase Crop Yield" become rather ...boring

Spells to determine if someone is honest or lying, oath spells that cause bad things to happen to someone who goes back on an agreement.

This is the level that how pervasive magic is and how much it costs becomes and issue.

 

It would seriously change the very nature of society if crime was impossible (instantaneous divination of who committed a crime and the subsequent summoning of the culprit by "summon")

 

TB

[Mutant for Hire]

Re: Monte Cook's Arcana Evolved

 

But not that important. At least not from the angle of interesting story telling. Yes, have them, but lets move on. Like I said, there is much more to life than to most sentient life than producing offspring (however important that it may be).

*snigger* Oh you have absolutely *no* idea of how much that would impact society. Hint: look at what the contraceptive pill has done to sexual mores. Now think about what happens when you dump that sort of contraceptive technology on a primitive society. Hunter/gatherer societies already have pretty loose sexual mores.

 

Actually, it's the combination of contraceptive magic and paternity magic that would deal a double-whammy. A spell to reliably determine paternity (and the two fundies of magic, sympathy and contigation would do that) would bascially undermine a huge number of sexual customs and mores, like the prizing of virginity and locking women up (two crude methods to control paternity of the offspring of the women). With reliable contraception and paternity magic, all of a sudden a need for those customs goes out the window.

Again, medicine, it's been done.

Well, you're talking about magic that's useful to citizens. I said there was overlap.

How about copying of books, making of rugs (and otherlabor intensive products), or currency that can automatically make change (dollar coin that can divide into 4 quarters)

Now you run into a snag. In most medieval economies, labor was dirt cheap. In fact it wasn't until the Black Death made labor more expensive that labor saving devices came into vogue. Why spend money on an expensive magician and magic when peasant labor is so cheap. In the end, you use magic to accomplish the things that can't be done by brute labor. Unless you're pushing yourself into an industrial-age magitech society, which veers away from most medieval fantasy worlds.

 

Why bother wasting magical energy enchanting coins to make change? Frankly most magicians would be spending their energy detecting (or creating) counterfeit coins.

.

All under one topic, agriculture, done.

Well, excuse me but given the fact that 90+% of people in agrarian society are farmers and the other percentage are heavily dependent on agriculture, frankly agricultural magic would almost certainly be the dominant form of magic studied and practiced. Agricultural societies tended to live one good harvest away from starvation. For that matter, the revenues of the upper class depend on squeezing as much wealth out of the land as possible.

What other topics in life could be enhanced by magic, particularly in ways that are not just replacing something that a human could do by labor (Under Mercantilism for example, a spell that that solves the traveling salesman problem instantly would be very useful for saving money on travel) It still seems that these spell ideas keep ending just being variations of the same thing. Personally having 15 different spells to "Ease Childbirth" or "Increase Crop Yield" become rather ...boringThis is the level that how pervasive magic is and how much it costs becomes and issue.

In general, in most societies, replacing unskilled labor by magic would be extremely unlikely, unless the magic of a skilled and educated (and hence expensive) magician became cheaper than that of an unskilled laborer.

 

Frankly, most of the "boring" spells are the ones that are most useful. There are spells/items that allow communication over long distances. That looks dull to you but believe me, most rulers would love to have those spells.

It would seriously change the very nature of society if crime was impossible (instantaneous divination of who committed a crime and the subsequent summoning of the culprit by "summon")

Except that for every spell there is a counterspell. Remember that a truth spell can only determine what someone believes to be the truth. Murder someone, alter a peasant's memories to make them believe they were the murderer and turn them in. Likewise if necromancy exists, bind the spirits to lie under interrogation magic, and use more magic to conceal the lie.

[Curufea]

Re: Monte Cook's Arcana Evolved

 

I think it really depends on the style of GMing-

Does the GM want to create a world or does the GM just want to stick with the PCs and not bother with the details?

[Inu]

Re: Monte Cook's Arcana Evolved

 

Check out Hero Wars sometime. In the Orlanthi culture of Glorantha, everyone -- EVERYONE, beginning at age 13-18 -- can use magic. Most people use their magic purely to enhance their mundane abilities. ("I'm an initiate of the farming god. I get a bonus whenever I plough my field.") Others invest more time into developing their magic and can do more powerful things. ("I use my connection to the farming god to break up the soil, making this hard, dry earth easier to plough.") Certain rituals are available to all, such as contraception (all women can control their fertility, making family planning possible in a bronze/iron-age culture).

 

On a community level, one day out of every ten is spent in holy celebrations, which have real effect... on many of them, the participants actually travel to the God World and visit their deities (initiates experience this only vaguely, devotees with more direct memory). The celebrations and sacfices performed give actual, tangible benefits over the next year. Failure to perform these rituals have major repercussions... (if you don't greet summer as it blows away winter, for instance, winter might not end... but only in your clan's lands).

 

Battles between two clans have people flying in the sky, daimones summoned by both sides, and a good number of warriors wielding flaming weapons, striking with lightning bolts, or things like that.

 

And back to the personal level, there's magic for everything. There's matchmaker magic, which can bring two people together; death magic to send the souls to the otherworld; fertility magic to aid conception and birth; divination magic to tell when to plant seeds to where danger will come from; household magic to clean rooms or make up with your spouse; animal magic to keep the herds in order; storm magic to bring rain on your lands or hail on your enemy's.

 

It's some damn neat stuff. Ubiquitous magic gets FUN.

[Teflon Billy]

Re: Monte Cook's Arcana Evolved

 

*snigger* Oh you have absolutely *no* idea of how much that would impact society. Hint: look at what the contraceptive pill has done to sexual mores. Now think about what happens when you dump that sort of contraceptive technology on a primitive society. Hunter/gatherer societies already have pretty loose sexual mores.

 

Actually, it's the combination of contraceptive magic and paternity magic that would deal a double-whammy. A spell to reliably determine paternity (and the two fundies of magic, sympathy and contigation would do that) would bascially undermine a huge number of sexual customs and mores, like the prizing of virginity and locking women up (two crude methods to control paternity of the offspring of the women). With reliable contraception and paternity magic, all of a sudden a need for those customs goes out the window.

Well, you're talking about magic that's useful to citizens. I said there was overlap.

Now you run into a snag. In most medieval economies, labor was dirt cheap. In fact it wasn't until the Black Death made labor more expensive that labor saving devices came into vogue. Why spend money on an expensive magician and magic when peasant labor is so cheap. In the end, you use magic to accomplish the things that can't be done by brute labor. Unless you're pushing yourself into an industrial-age magitech society, which veers away from most medieval fantasy worlds.

 

Why bother wasting magical energy enchanting coins to make change? Frankly most magicians would be spending their energy detecting (or creating) counterfeit coins.

Well, excuse me but given the fact that 90+% of people in agrarian society are farmers and the other percentage are heavily dependent on agriculture, frankly agricultural magic would almost certainly be the dominant form of magic studied and practiced. Agricultural societies tended to live one good harvest away from starvation. For that matter, the revenues of the upper class depend on squeezing as much wealth out of the land as possible.

In general, in most societies, replacing unskilled labor by magic would be extremely unlikely, unless the magic of a skilled and educated (and hence expensive) magician became cheaper than that of an unskilled laborer.

 

Frankly, most of the "boring" spells are the ones that are most useful. There are spells/items that allow communication over long distances. That looks dull to you but believe me, most rulers would love to have those spells.

Except that for every spell there is a counterspell. Remember that a truth spell can only determine what someone believes to be the truth. Murder someone, alter a peasant's memories to make them believe they were the murderer and turn them in. Likewise if necromancy exists, bind the spirits to lie under interrogation magic, and use more magic to conceal the lie.

This whole response just demonstrates the areas you find more important for you games. That's fine and dandy.

 

It however doesn't address my point that if we are going to work on non-combat magic, that we need to cover more than just animal husbandry and agriculture (which on these boards seems to be the only concern for many of you)

 

 

Some areas just off the top of my head:

 

Currency

Commerce

Communication

Mining

Power Generation (would you even need electricity if you had self acting devices?)

Waste Disposal (garbage and sewer)

Entertainment

Jurisprudence (Who ends up being a Judge, Priests of the god of Justice or Wizards of Divination?)

Taxation

Police Investigation

 

What other topics might be particularly enhanced or effected by widespread (but not nessesarily widely accessible) magic.

 

TB

[Mutant for Hire]

Re: Monte Cook's Arcana Evolved

 

This whole response just demonstrates the areas you find more important for you games. That's fine and dandy.

 

It however doesn't address my point that if we are going to work on non-combat magic, that we need to cover more than just animal husbandry and agriculture (which on these boards seems to be the only concern for many of you)

*sigh* I repeatedly covered points that had nothing to do with agriculture. That I ended up shooting down some of your points that had nothing to do with agriculture doesn't mean I'm fixated on the subject. What I did spend a lot of time looking at was economic realities.

 

Magic as a labor saving device only makes sense when magical labor is cheaper than manual labor, and that includes the cost and expense of the magician. Again, the Black Death reduced the population and drove up labor costs even as the increase in money per capita drove up the demand for goods, and thus produced a situation where labor saving devices became economical. The steam engine was invented centuries ago in Greece, but it languished because slave labor was so cheap.

 

Likewise, sure a wizard can extract ore out of the earth. But as magic tends to tire the caster out, the question is whether that wizard with all of their expensive training is actually cheaper in the long run than a bunch of peasants. For that matter, is it the most economical use of the wizard's skill to haul ore out of the earth? Maybe you can teach miners some spells to help them pull ore out of the earth, but then you're just treating magic as an alternative to the hydraulic drill.

 

If you really want to think about more realistic magic, then the simplest thing to do is to remember that magic is merely the technology of a world where the laws of nature work differently. Technology is invented to solve problems that people face, and is used when it is economical to do so. (yes, I keep harping on the economic angle, history is littered with inventions that gathered dust because no one had a need for them)

 

And to some extent your categories are approaching things backwards. Most commerce needs communication, transportation and preservation magic to solve most of the demands. Communication to arrange buyers and find prices in distant markets, transportation to move goods around and magic to preserve perishable goods.

 

Another way to approach the problem is by profession. You list professions that are reasonably affected by magic and where it is economical to use magic instead of brute labor, or cases where magic can do things brute labor cannot. What sort of spells are carpenters and woodworkers likely to learn and to use?

 

Most magic ends up being incredibly boring and dull. Yes, there is a cantrip that allows a woodworker to sense hidden rot or cracks or other flaws in the wood, but is it particularly relevent to anyone who isn't a woodworker?

 

And there are economic realities of supply and demand. A spell to weave cloth quickly is useless unless there is magical increase along every link of the supply chain. The industrial revolution required vast production of raw materials as well as the mass conversion of raw materials to finished products, as well as the evolution of a market to demand cheap goods. And by that point you're no longer in your classical fantasy world which is based on an agrarian society.

 

And again, obsession with agriarian society != obsession with agricultural magic. It's an overall technology level and economics. Magical spells are produced and used in response to demands of the population and only when it is economical to do so.

[Markdoc]

Re: Monte Cook's Arcana Evolved

 

Before you can work out what spells are available in these "other spheres" you need to work out what society's like and how magic works.

 

I *do* have magitech in my game, but you won't find spells for making rugs or magic used to track down common lawbreakers. Like in medival times, life is cheap. You have millions of peasant women making rugs. What magician is going to want to compete with them? He could make a beter living for less work by selling them healing and easy childbirth: something they can't duplicate themselves.

 

But you will find spells for making armour and weapons. Traditionally, the ruling/warrior class would pay lots to have the best weapons available. Sir Gigaknight can afford to pay whatever it takes to have a really cool magic spear - he can pay with the loot he takes from people who *don't* have a 4d6 AP RKA, no range modifier.

 

Likewise, powerful merchant houses do have long range telepathy and travel spells available - but Joe the ordinary merchant still moves stuff by ship and donkey. Is it really worthwhile to have a mage shift the stuff? If the answer is yes (rare spices, gems, exotic slaves), then do it. If the answer is no (potatoes) then don't.

 

In general, many of the things we take for granted are not just a product of high technology but of mass production. Magic is mostly a one at time kind of thing and in most games it's not something that everyone can do. If, to use a mobile phone, you had to hire the services of an expensive professional to walk around with you, then there'd be no mobile phones.

 

cheers, Mark

[tancred]

Re: Monte Cook's Arcana Evolved

 

One of the mundane magic items I worked up, without having thought about the consequences first, was the Magic Icebox (and its companion, the Magic, No-Flame Stove) . The Icebox costs 3 Real Points, which struck me as something that could possibly be affordable, at least by the well-off.

 

Then I got to thinking about the consequences. If you read anything at all about the Napoleonic era, one of the things that strikes you is how absolutely miserable conditions were for soldiers and especially sailors. But now, with the magic icebox, (relatively) fresh food (or at least food that isn't full of maggots), whenever you want it. And with the No-Flame Magic Stove you can cook on a wooden ship, even in bad weather.

 

Then I invented another magic item, the Bug Zapper (1 Real Point). Suddenly, anyone who can afford any magic at all can have a room permanently free of vermin.

 

Strikes me that both of those would have long-term social consequences.

[Curufea]

Re: Monte Cook's Arcana Evolved

 

Very true - so they would have to be limited to the nobility unless you did want to rework the culture. If there were magical devices and spells that were as convenient to use as our technology today - would the society be similar to our own?

[Captain Obvious]

Re: Monte Cook's Arcana Evolved

 

One of the mundane magic items I worked up, without having thought about the consequences first, was the Magic Icebox (and its companion, the Magic, No-Flame Stove) . The Icebox costs 3 Real Points, which struck me as something that could possibly be affordable, at least by the well-off.

 

Then I got to thinking about the consequences. If you read anything at all about the Napoleonic era, one of the things that strikes you is how absolutely miserable conditions were for soldiers and especially sailors.

 

Sailors and soldiers of the Napoleonic era were far from well-off, though, except maybe the senior officers. Your Icebox and No-Flame Stove would make their lives fairly comfortable, but the rank-and-file would still be pretty miserable.

[Curufea]

Re: Monte Cook's Arcana Evolved

 

Other hardships at sea included spending a large amount of time in claustrophobic wet wooden rooms. High risk of infection and disease, bad diet, heat stroke and sunburn. Not to mention "industrial accidents"

[Old Man]

Re: Monte Cook's Arcana Evolved

 

Most magic ends up being incredibly boring and dull. Yes, there is a cantrip that allows a woodworker to sense hidden rot or cracks or other flaws in the wood, but is it particularly relevent to anyone who isn't a woodworker?

 

...

 

And again, obsession with agriarian society != obsession with agricultural magic. It's an overall technology level and economics. Magical spells are produced and used in response to demands of the population and only when it is economical to do so.

 

Speaking of which, it's actually somewhat sensible to assume that lots of resources would get invested in powerful combat magic, b/c that's similar to the situation historically. Look at all the money that is sunk into the development, procurement, and operation of weapons systems like the Stealth bomber and nuclear missile submarines. Morality aside, that's a significant chunk of change, and it's pretty much always been that way for Western civilizations all the way back to the Roman Empire. It stands to reason that combat-useful magic would likewise be disproportionately well developed.