![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Actually useful magic items
Nov. 9th, 2022 07:14 amToday I flipped through rulebooks looking for magic items that would be properly actually helpful for real problems.
My usual favourites provide clean water and edible food, plus relevant endure elements, and technology has been doing okay at those lately.
But in the Advanced Class Guide I found
Physicians Spectacles
which grant a constant awareness of poisons and diseases.
... presumably an accurate one, otherwise anxiety has that covered.
Those would just be super handy though. You'd still need testing to get specific I think... nope, it is specific already, it's using 'diagnose disease' spell, probably you wouldnt want to rely on magic entirely though.
So much quicker than science so far. Very handy.
And one of those times that magic is slightly unlikely to be useful in a given adventure, though it do come up in several, but totally likely to be necessary in real life.
... adventures will have specific traps and monsters try to get you, but the random chance of respiratory illness isn't going to add to the dramatic arc much, I guess, so that doesn't tend to come up.
Mind, the next bit of Adventure Path involves a cult trying to make an airborne version of the polymorph plague, so probably useful in game too.
... huh, might have just noticed why I've stalled on reading that one...
(aside from it being a bit much right now because *waves vaguely at everything*, I am not keen on Adventures only having diseases when they're deliberate and fixable by hitting the right people. Cathartic, potentially, sure, but also the wrong kind of training.)
Though I suppose methodical use of Physician's Spectacles and the spell Remove Disease could go a long way to making a world where random disease was unlikely.
... that would be awesome.
Also in the ACG is the Elixir of Sex Shift. Which seems handy. But oddly placed in the Class book. I mean, I don't think being trans is specifically associated with being one of the Advanced classes. ... I realise it's probably just publishing order, but now I'm entertaining ideas of Wizard/Sorceror/Arcanist as genders.
... or Slayer. Slayer is in this one as well...
Today I have been mostly relistening to Torchwood audios and feeling grumpy.
It seems to me many class features in rpgs only help to solve the very specific problems the adventure sets up. I mean magic, especially full casters that can make Wondrous Items, is a swiss army knife and a half, but many classes are just an assortment of ways to hit things, and if you want to apply a non hitting things approach, you either need a plug in like the social combat cards, or a whole different rpg.
And applied to RL problems? Only very specific ranges of characters seem like solutions.
Ah well.
My usual favourites provide clean water and edible food, plus relevant endure elements, and technology has been doing okay at those lately.
But in the Advanced Class Guide I found
Physicians Spectacles
which grant a constant awareness of poisons and diseases.
... presumably an accurate one, otherwise anxiety has that covered.
Those would just be super handy though. You'd still need testing to get specific I think... nope, it is specific already, it's using 'diagnose disease' spell, probably you wouldnt want to rely on magic entirely though.
So much quicker than science so far. Very handy.
And one of those times that magic is slightly unlikely to be useful in a given adventure, though it do come up in several, but totally likely to be necessary in real life.
... adventures will have specific traps and monsters try to get you, but the random chance of respiratory illness isn't going to add to the dramatic arc much, I guess, so that doesn't tend to come up.
Mind, the next bit of Adventure Path involves a cult trying to make an airborne version of the polymorph plague, so probably useful in game too.
... huh, might have just noticed why I've stalled on reading that one...
(aside from it being a bit much right now because *waves vaguely at everything*, I am not keen on Adventures only having diseases when they're deliberate and fixable by hitting the right people. Cathartic, potentially, sure, but also the wrong kind of training.)
Though I suppose methodical use of Physician's Spectacles and the spell Remove Disease could go a long way to making a world where random disease was unlikely.
... that would be awesome.
Also in the ACG is the Elixir of Sex Shift. Which seems handy. But oddly placed in the Class book. I mean, I don't think being trans is specifically associated with being one of the Advanced classes. ... I realise it's probably just publishing order, but now I'm entertaining ideas of Wizard/Sorceror/Arcanist as genders.
... or Slayer. Slayer is in this one as well...
Today I have been mostly relistening to Torchwood audios and feeling grumpy.
It seems to me many class features in rpgs only help to solve the very specific problems the adventure sets up. I mean magic, especially full casters that can make Wondrous Items, is a swiss army knife and a half, but many classes are just an assortment of ways to hit things, and if you want to apply a non hitting things approach, you either need a plug in like the social combat cards, or a whole different rpg.
And applied to RL problems? Only very specific ranges of characters seem like solutions.
Ah well.