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The following is an example
of Geoza Spirit Magic (Shamanism) in action. The game mechanics will be interspersed
with a narrative account of the events. |
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Jarrett saw the
afternoon sun dropping fast as he rested on the southern slope of an unnamed hill in
northern Pelos. He'd been climbing up and down these hills all day, and still hadn't
found the landmark he was searching for. He sighed heavily, and started to move
upslope again, when movement to his left caught his eye. |
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He looked west, into the
afternoon sun, and saw again what had caught his eye: goblins, moving his way.
There were only three of them, and they were still a ways downslope of him, but
they could probably move faster over this hilly terrain than he could. This was a
definite problem. No use trying to avoid them, or running away. He'll have to
try to take them out before they reach him. He had his walking staff and a good dirk
at his belt, but those goblins would swarm over him in an instant if they could close with
him. |
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| Situation |
Jarrett, a Spirit Mage, is a
little lost in the foothills of the Skyreach Mountains in Pelos. He spots the 3
goblins headed his way at a distance of about 80 paces west and downslope, and decides to
stand and fight. Jarrett's relevant characteristics are as follows: |
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| Charisma |
8 |
Spirit Lore |
8 |
| Willpower |
9 |
Spirit Capacity |
16 |
| Endurance |
6 |
Meditation Asset |
12 |
| Communication |
7 |
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| Perception |
7 |
Bound Spirits |
Bear Spirit (1 service, SD 4) |
| Quickness |
6 |
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Greater Flame Spirit (1
service, SD 5) |
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SD = Summoning Difficulty
(also counts as capacity requirement) |
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Additionally, Jarrett has a
Spirit Ally (Rank 10), a Jann (powerful Elemental Spirit of the air). |
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Jarrett's Omnessence
Expertises: |
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| Conjuration |
6 |
Energy |
7 |
| Creation |
7 |
Organic |
7 |
| Destruction |
5 |
Physical |
7 |
| Divination |
8 |
Reality |
4 |
| Manipulation |
7 |
Spirit |
8 |
| Transformation |
8 |
Will |
8 |
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As can be seen from his
ability levels, Jarrett is an experienced Spirit Mage, with a variety of options as to the
kinds of effects he can create. Jarrett's Option Point total for each Action
Interval will be 8. |
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Jarrett's player tells the
Mythguide that what he wants to do is have the Bear Spirit hurl that rock at the nearest
goblin. Jarrett proposes the following Manipulation/ Physical Spirit Paradigm: Hurl
Rock |
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| Scope |
Jarrett will have to expand
the basic range to Sight, which is a Moderate level of Scope. So the minimum cost
for this Paradigm includes 6 points for Scope (base 2, plus 4 points, the minimum level
for a Moderate effect). |
| Potency |
Just moving the rock is a
minor alteration to the rock's physical state (currently at rest), which is a Moderate
Effect (minimum 4). Jarrett needs to really hurt the goblin, so he allocates another
10 points to Potency, which will give the hurled rock an attack value of 5 - a little
better than the average longbow arrow. Total of 14 points for Potency. |
| Intricacy |
Intricacy for this paradigm
isn't bad - its only a Slight effect, Jarrett's player figures. |
| Temper Aspects |
Jarrett will need to Target
the hurled rock, but that doesn't cost any Omnessence. Jarrett's player doesn't see
a need for any other Temper Aspect. He could have picked Removed, if he had wanted to hurl
a rock which was some distance away from both him and the goblin, but because this rock is
lying basically at Jarrett's feet, the player doesn't think its necessary. |
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The Mythguide agrees with
the assessment for this paradigm. Jarrett's player has been doing this for a little
while, knows the ARIA Paradigm System and the Spirit Origin, and he knows the way the
Mythguide thinks. The total cost for this paradigm will be 23 Omnessence. A
fairly easy effect, well under the limits of Jarrett's abilities - Jarrett has ratings of
Manipulation 7 and Physical 7, and his Spirit Lore is an 8, so Jarrett has an effective
Configuration Expertise of 7. That means he can create an effect of up to 49
Omnessence (Manipulation 7 times Physical 7) - quite a bit more than this little paradigm
requires. |
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Additionally, the Mythguide
checks the Province of the Bear Spirit, and sees that it has a Configuration Might of 7 in
Manipulation/Physical. Ordinarily, that would mean a limit of 49 Omnessence, but
since Jarrett had Bound the Bear Spirit to him, the Spirit's effective rating is reduced
to 6 - a limit of 36 Omnessence, still well above what is required for this effect. |
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Jarrett spends the next OP
channeling the power of Bear into the effect he wants, and makes an Effect Trial.
His base for the trial is 4 (half of his Charisma), and his rank is the average of his
expertise in Manipulation (7), and Physical (7), which is 7. The difficulty of the
trial is the Affinity of the rock (3), modified by his fatigue (+1). Jarrett's
Adjusted Trial Chance is 7 (4 + 7 - 4 = 7). The player rolls a 5, which is a
Complete Success. |
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Jarrett now has to make one
more roll - the Targeting Trial to see if he can actually hit the goblin that this rock is
now whizzing towards. His base for this trial is equal to his Charisma, 8.
His rank for this trial is his Perception rank, 7, which gives him a Targeting Trial Asset
of 15. Not bad. But added to that is the Attack Value of 5 for the paradigm,
for a total of 20. Difficulty starts at 2 for a Targeting Trial, but again, Jarrett
is Winded, and that can affect his accuracy, so difficulty jumps to 3. The
Mythguide assesses the situation, and says that the goblin is moving at a fast walk, which
will add another +1 to the difficulty. Since the goblin probably isn't expecting a
rock to come flying at him at the moment, the Mythguide decides the goblin won't be
dodging anything, but the goblin's tough hide will add another 2 to the difficulty.
So the final ATC for this trial is 14 - an almost certain success. The player rolls
a 0, followed by an 8, which results in a Complete Success. The rock hits! |
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The Mythguide rolls a die
for hit location, and announces that the rock has hit the goblin in the left leg, just
above the knee, giving it a Wound and slowing it down somewhat. |
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Jarrett leaned
against his staff and opened his senses to the Spirit Realms, seeking in the ephemeral
otherworld for a spirit to aid him in his time of need. He called upon his Spirit
Ally the Jann, "Find me a Spirit of the Earth, one who can smash my
enemy." His Ally answered his call, finding a nearby spirit of the mountains, a
small Troll. Ahh, thought Jarrett, this will work. Come, brother of the
mountains, come aid your spirit brother Jarrett. |
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Jarrett reached
out with his spirit and drew the Troll to him, smiling, hand outstretched to greet the
Troll in brotherhood.. The Troll skipped across the hazy, shifting terrain of the
Spirit world and stood before the mage. "What do you need, spirit
brother?" the small Troll asked Jarrett. "Do you need a nice cave to sleep
in?" |
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Jarrett tries to summon a
type of Earth Spirit, a Lesser Troll. The Lesser Troll has a Summoning Difficulty of
4, which the Mythguide rules takes at least two entire Intervals to try to summon to
Jarrett. Jarrett makes a Meditation Trial to enter the Spirit World. His
Meditation Asset is 12, and the difficulty in this case is 4, the Mythguide says, because
standing on the side of a hill with goblins climbing after you is not an ideal way to
meditate, and Jarrett has a level of Fatigue from climbing hills all day, raising the
difficulty to 5. Jarrett's Spirit Ally can help him, adding half its rank to the ATC
(+5) The player rolls a 1, followed by a 3, getting a Mythic Success! Jarrett
easily slips into the awareness of the Spirit Realms needed to summon a spirit to him, and
locates a Lesser Troll in only one Action Interval. |
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Next, Jarrett makes a
Charisma Trial. His base is 3, and his rank is 8, giving him a Trial Asset of 11.
The base difficulty to summon a Lesser Troll is its Summoning Difficulty, a 4.
Jarrett's fatigue level doesn't affect his Charisma Trial - he's in the spirit
world for the purposes of this trial, and being tired doesn't make him any less
charismatic. Also, Jarrett's Spirit Ally can help him on this trial as well (+5).
Jarrett's Adjusted Trial Chance is 12. The player rolls an 8, achieving a
Complete Success. The Troll will grant him one service. |
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Jarrett doesn't have to Bind
the Troll to use its services, and doing so would reduce its usefulness, so Jarrett
doesn't Bind the Troll to him. |
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Jarrett then makes a Fatigue
Trial at Difficulty 5 (same difficulty as the Meditation Trial he made earlier).
Jarrett has an Endurance of 6, so his Fatigue Trial Asset is 9 (base 3 for an attribute
trial, plus his Endurance Rank of 6). Subtracting the difficulty of 5, his Adjusted
Trial Chance is 4 - not good. And Jarrett's Spirit Ally can't help him with this one
- at least, not directly. Jarrett's player will have to roll well not to get another
level of Fatigue from gathering that Omnessence - the player rolls, and gets a 3.
Whew! Just under the number he needed. Jarrett evades fatigue for now. |
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Note: for the purposes
of this example, the time necessary to summon a spirit was condensed to the minimum.
Although it is possible to find and summon a fairly powerful Spirit in only two Action
Intervals, it would normally take much longer to find one and obtain its aid. In
this case, Jarrett was very lucky to find one so agreeable, so quickly. Of course,
having a powerful Jann as a Spirit Ally helps, as well. |
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"No,
mountain-brother," Jarrett sent the spirit-thought to the Troll, "I just need
you to pick up this rock and hit that goblin-being in the fixed-place with it, as fast and
as hard as you can." Will you do that for me, fierce Troll? |
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"Yes, that is an
easy task, I shall do it for you now," the Troll said as it reached down to pick up
the rock. As the goblin hobbles closer, the Troll hits the wounded goblin with
incredible speed, smashing the rock into the goblin's chest, caving in his lungs, and
sending him rolling end-over-end down the side of the hill. One down, two to go,
Jarrett thinks. |
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Note: The "fixed-place" that Jarrett
is referring to is one way of referring to the material world to a Spirit. Spirit's
commonly think of their "otherworld," the physical world, as being basically
fixed and unchanging in comparison to their own. |
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This effect is basically the same as the last one,
with a massive increase in Potency. Jarrett's player decides to allocate 30
Omnessence to Potency, for an Attack Value of 15. This rock is going to smash that
goblin flat! The total cost for this paradigm will be 43 Omnessence (6 for Scope, 34
for Potency, and 3 for Intricacy). |
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The Mythguide checks the Province of a Lesser Troll,
and sees that it has a Configuration Might of 8 in Manipulation/Physical, more than enough
to handle this effect. |
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Jarrett rolls his Effect
Trial again, and succeeds, then rolls for Targeting. This time, the Mythguide says,
the goblin will attempt to dodge. Jarrett's player points out that this attack is 10
points stronger than the last one, and the goblin is wounded and slower. The
Mythguide agrees, but says the goblin still gets a chance to dodge, since this rock won't
be a total surprise. The Mythguide rolls for the goblin, and announces that the
goblin managed to achieve a Marginal Success on his dodge, despite the slope and his
wound. Jarrett's player grins and rolls his Targeting Trial, which has an ATC of 23.
He rolls a 6, which is a Mythic Success! Even taking away one degree of
success for the goblin's dodge still leaves Jarrett with an Extraordinary Success.
The Mythguide announces that the rock smashed into the goblin's chest and inflicted a
Mortal Injury to the goblin. |
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Jarrett glanced over at
the other two goblins, who had climbed upslope and were now approaching very quickly
across the hillside. Have to take out both of them at the same time, he thought.
Another rock won't do it. Jarrett reached out one more time to the Spirit
Realms, this time feeling for the presence of the Flame Spirit he has Bound to him.
"Come, brother fire," Jarrett thinks to the flickering Spirit, "Aid me now
and you will go free. I want you to burn those two goblin-beings in the fixed-place,
and cover them with your hot flames!" |
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"Yesssss,"
hissed the Flame Spirit, "I will burn them with fire from the heart of the furnaces
of my home." As Jarrett pointed to the spot midway between and just behind the
two goblins, where he wanted the effect to center, the Flame Spirit flashed to that
location and manifested a huge ball of fire into the material world, using Jarrett's will
as a channel for its power. |
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Jarrett doesn't have time
for anything but to call upon his remaining Bound Spirit, a Greater Flame Spirit, and ask
it to burn the goblins. The effect Jarrett's player has in mind will be a
Creation/Energy Spirit Paradigm: Fireball. He's done this before, so he knows
it will look something like this: |
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| Scope |
Jarrett will have to expand
the basic range to Sight, which is a Moderate level of Scope, at least 4 points.
Additionally, this will be an Area effect, so that's another Moderate Scope increase, and
gives him a basic radius of effect of (6 - Material Comprehension paces), or 2
paces. Figure 10 points total for Scope. |
| Potency |
Jarrett needs a powerful
effect for this one, he won't have time to try again. The player allocates 24 points
to Potency, which will yield an Attack Value of 12. |
| Intricacy |
Intricacy is a little higher
for this paradigm. Jarrett needs the fire to have elemental effects (i.e. it burns
like fire, not just energy that looks like fire), which is a Moderate effect.
Jarrett allocates 8 points to Intricacy. |
| Temper Aspects |
Jarrett will need to Target
the fireball, but that doesn't cost any Omnessence, just a Targeting Trial. Also,
he puts 4 points into the Widen Temper Aspect, which increases the radius of effect for
this Shaping to 10 paces in radius (Variation Facility for Spirit Widen Aspect is 1 - for
each point of Omnessence allocated to Widen, the area is increased by the base
increment. The base is 2 paces, so each point adds 2 paces. 2 + (4 * 2) = 10
paces total radius). |
| Total cost for
this effect is 46 points of Omnessence. That's just under Jarrett's limit for a
Creation Energy paradigm. Although his Spirit Lore is 8 (max 64 points), his
expertises in Creation (7) and Energy (7) give him a limit of 49 points of Omnessence, so
he's limited by his relative lack of experience in Creation/Energy effects. Remember
Geoza handles Omnessence Limits slightly differently than in ARIA - instead of averaging
the ranks, and then squaring the result, just multiply the ranks together directly.
This gives a smoother progression of ability than the standard ARIA method. |
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Jarrett spends 5 OPs in this
Interval communicating the intent for his fireball effect to the Spirit, then spends 1 OP
to Channel the effect. Jarrett's player rolls the Effect Trial. Base = 4,
Rank = 7 (average of Creation / Energy, limited by Spirit Lore). Unlike the Hurl
Rock paradigm, where the direct magical effect was targeting the rock to be thrown, in
this paradigm, the two goblins are the direct targets of the magical fire. So the
difficulty for this effect will be the higher Affinity of the two goblins. The
Mythguide rules that they are average, and thus the Affinity will be 3 (each goblin has an
Aura of 5, based on their average Empathy ratings of 5. Spirit Affinity for living
creatures is 5- (Aura/2), or in this case, 5 - (5/2). Five divided by two is two
(round down in this case). 5-2 =3, which is the goblins' Affinity. Pretty
average - just like the rock. Of course, that base Difficulty is increased by
Jarrett's Fatigue (+1), so final Difficulty for this Effect Trial is 4. 4+7-4 =
7. Jarrett's Adjusted Trial Chance is 7. The player rolls a 4, which results
in a Complete Success for this effect. |
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In this case, the Mythguide
points out, the goblins will get a Passive Resistance Trial to resist the effects of the
fireball. Their base is their Spirit Affinity (3), and their rank is their Willpower
attribute (the Mythguide again rules that they are average in this regard, and gives them
a 5). The difficulty for passive resistance to a Spirit effect is the Effect Might
of the paradigm. The total of potency and intricacy is 32 points, which from the
Effect Might Chart on page 141 in the ARIA Reality chapter, gives an Effect Might of
4. 3+5-4=4. The goblins must roll 4 or less to resist this effect even
partially. The Mythguide rolls a die for each goblin, and rolls a 4 and a 7.
One goblin fails to resist, while the other barely manages a Marginal Success on
resistance. He'll be a little less affected than the one that failed. |
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Finally, Jarrett's player
makes the targeting roll. Selecting a center point about 5 paces behind and midway
between the two goblins, the player adds the factors together. Base 8, Rank 7,
Attack Value 12, Difficulty 7 (base 2, +1 for Fatigue, +2 for movement at a run, +2 for
the tough hides of the goblins). ATC = 20. The player rolls a 6, which is an
Extraordinary Success. The first goblin, who achieved a Marginal Success on his
Passive Resistance Trial, will reduce that effect to a Superior Success - he'll only
receive Major Wounds over every location on his body from the rear. The second
goblin, who failed his Passive Resistance Trial completely, gets hit with the full effect
of the fireball, taking Mortal Injuries over his entire body. |
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