Cyfandil Starting Classes

This is the quick start page I'm going to hand out when we are ready to roll up our first characters. These are the big six (with a hidden seventh) but there are other classes which I will reveal in time. 

Here is the text: 

Quick Start Class Guide

 

You can get a copy of the PDF here.

Rituals

A Ritual is a complex ceremony that creates a magic effect. You must read it from a book or scroll containing it.

Arcane rituals can be made from the spellbook spells they are based on. The time and is the same as making a scroll: one day per spell level, but the cost is one-tenth that of a normal spell scroll: 10 x spell level x spell level in GP. This ritual instruction is inscribed into a ritual book like a normal spell is inscribed into a normal spellbook. Each ritual scroll may be used only once. It is consumed by using the ritual.

Anyone who can read Common can use a ritual book to perform the ritual it contains. They must have the appropriate material components and those components are expended. It takes one Turn per spell level of the original spell to perform a ritual, or at least 10 minutes.

A Ritual Book: Like a spellbook, a ritual book is the repository of the information needed to perform a ritual. It costs 50 gp. It weighs 50 cn. It has 128 pages. Each ritual instruction takes up a number of pages equal to the spell’s level. Ritual books may be found as treasure. Roll the spell rituals inscribed as normal.

You may create a new ritual book by copying an old one. It takes one day per page and an INT check for each ritual (or WIS check for Clerical rituals.) A missed check means a ruined ritual and messed up pages in your book. You can’t re-use those pages.

Learning a Ritual: It takes at least 8 uninterrupted hours to learn how to perform a Ritual. At the end of that time you make an INT or WIS check to see if you have learned it. A failed check means you have to spend 8 more hours learning it. Spending time with an appropriate Magic-User or Cleric teacher, who knows the spell to be studied, means you don’t need to make the INT or WIS check.

In this way a Fighter can cast Cure Light Wounds or Detect Magic if he needs it. Combat spells don’t work as well because they take so long to cast.

Re-Examining the Cleric's Healing Spells

This post originally appeared on September 16, 2017.

Miraculous spells should look miraculous. They ought to require the utmost faith from their practitioners. They ought to reside half the distance between God and Death.

 

I'm no James Raggi, but the miracles in my imagination look way cooler than the generic ones in the several spell lists of D&D. Maybe you will like them and pick them up for your weird game (or normal game for that matter!)

Cure Light Wounds by Dabrood Thompson

Cure Spells

When the Cleric casts a spell from the Cure Light Wounds family, he speaks the name of the deity and asks for succor holding his holy symbol fast in his right hand. Then he jams the symbol right into this left wrist, and rends his own flesh down the inside of his arm!

Cure Disease and Restoration

The Cleric removes his armor and if possible his garments underneath. He places the recipient of the spell on her back, stands astride her, and falls to his knees. The holy man speaks the name of the deity and begs for protection while holding his holy symbol forth to the sky in both hands. Then he jams the holy symbol right into his own heart!

     The Cleric then pulls the holy symbol down his chest, forming a crease.  He sticks his hands inside and pulls apart his mantle, spilling vital organs over the recipient. It hurts him just as it would if he were not a holy man. When the recipient is so doused in blood and gristle, the Cleric pulls his vital organs back within his chest, and the deity heals him. The spell's target is whole once again.

Raise Dead and Resurrection

The big ones. The Cleric and the dead man are dressed in fine gold-embroidered white vestments. The Cleric lays down on a pallet or straw placed upon the ground and his charge placed next to him, against his body. When their temperatures have equalized, the Cleric grasps the hand of the dead man.  He prays for a few minutes, and then an assistant jams a golden awl into this neck, severing his carotid artery in a messy deluge.

     The Cleric breathes out his last. He is dead in minutes. Then, upon reaching the Realm of the Dead, he begins the search for the soul of the recipient of the spell. Should he find this soul and convince it to return to the Mortal Realm, the two souls will return and be placed again in their fragile vessels by the deity. If the Cleric cannot, he will return alone.

      Even though only a day passes here in our world, 100 years pass in the Realm of the Dead. Time passes differently there, and in 700 years' time, the departed soul surely has come to terms with its own death and has acclimated to the afterlife. This is why it is impossible to Raise someone gone for more than a few days' time.

Cause Wounds Spells

On the other hand, Cause Wounds is a lot like Anakin Skywalker doing a creepy Force Choke. The anti-Cleric calls out to his Dark God with his unholy dagger in his left hand, and grasps out with infernal Force at the vitals and wind pipe of his victim! The victim gags and feels the cold fingers of death around his neck, brain or heart.

     Cause Wounds spells operate at a distance and they are much cleaner and more clinical than their holy counterparts. When used on the restless dead, the disembodied force hand bolsters the undead, and knits together that which has been torn asunder by age, magic, and weapons. Neither version makes a sound or leaves a mark upon its target.

The Finger of Death

 

The accursed Finger of Death is performed when the anti-Cleric calls upon his Dark God and offers his own eternal servitude (for his soul is almost always owned by his God or another outsider already) in exchange for the chance to give his master the gift of another's.

     Dark energy courses into the body of the anti-Cleric as he recites litanies, backwards, in a loud voice.  These energies form up upon the left fist of the foul fiend. Then, as if throwing a black fire ball, the dark metropolitan casts forth this ball of pure evil toward the body of his victim. The ball cleaves the pale yellow-white soul from the victim's body, and then the anti-Cleric summons the soul to him with a beckoning finger. 

     After savoring this soul for just a moment, the anti-Cleric releases it into the Earth with a splash of dark eldritch power, where it is devoured by his dark master for all eternity. All that is left of the victim's life energy is a smoldering blue ember on the ground.

The Aluvian Calendar

 For the year 998:

Click to embiggen

During the Harvest, everyone in town must help. If a character isn't sick, dead, or aiding the harvest, he will be hanged on October 7th.

During Haven, the weather is too bad to go on adventures in the dungeon or overland, but characters can take care of indoor business.

During Holiday, exertion is strictly prohibited. Daily fines are 10 GP plus 100 GP per character level. 

During Open season, there are no restrictions on character actions.

On Sunday, no business will be done. Characters who are already out of town can keep moving (although they really shouldn't.) Clerics who exert themselves on Sunday will find they have no spells for eight days and nights. 

I rule that Anticlerics can work normally on Sunday. Instead, they are similarly restricted from sundown on Friday to sundown on Saturday. You could do that too, or that might be too complicated for your group.

During War, the characters must be available to the war effort in some capacity. No adventuring or other business takes place. Refusing this duty is desertion, which is, again, a hanging offense.