Friday, December 18, 2015

ACKS: Custom Magic Types

So there's a Patreon for new and interesting ACKS content, and their first release was today - rules for constructing new flavors of magic (ie, Divine, Arcane, Fae, what-have-you).  It doesn't quite go so far as letting you build True Sorcery, but there are still some interesting things I could see people doing with it.
  • Psionics are an obvious first candidate (if you're in to that sort of thing, which I'm not particularly).
  • Rather than a generic "Divine" magic source with the same effect-type multipliers for all deities, break it down further.  Shouldn't Thor's clerics be better at Blast spells than, say, Freya's?
    • Though I still ought to finish the Book of ACKSalted Deeds at some point.
  • Ooold-school Magic the Gathering (like, Arena-old), with each color having its own set of multipliers on different effects.
  • Corny wire-fu martial arts, with touch-range blast and death spells (Poisoned Buddha's Palm, Dim Mak), personal transfiguration (Giant Strength all over the place), protection (Shimmer, Iron Shirt), movement (Air Walk, Swift Sword?  Or should we say, Flurry of Blows, or A Thousand Fists?), and healing, optional enchantment (the old Ninja of the Crescent Moon hypnotic pattern) and detection.  Spell slots?  I think you mean ki points.
    • Heck, the sort of 'mythical China' you see in films like Iron Monkey or Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon actually checks out pretty well against ACKS' thematic assumptions - empire, threatened by corruption from within (and, less frequently, invaders from without).  You just have a few more certified bureaucrats and a few fewer feudal warlords (though depending on the time period...).

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