Mage college faction abilities completely revised!

One of the things I was most disappointed with when looking through Theory a couple weeks ago was the mage colleges. They were basically all the same thing: three levels of membership that gave bonuses to mana and maybe an interesting ability or two. So, I took two weeks and revised each and every one of them. Lets take a look.

The Helioseminary

Everyone's favorite light college just got a lot more lethal with 9 unique abilities including the ability to blind enemies, and heal in new ways. Speaking of..

The Pyrari Academy

The fire college got 9 new abilities that should make the fire mage play like something of a Rage-Mage. What do I mean? well how about:

Couple spellrage with abilities that reward you for going all-in on the offensive, and a Pyrari mage becomes quite the aggro strategy.

The Catricarch 

The terra college got 18 new abilities. Many of these abilities are focused around increasing the effectiveness of chain lightning, using lightning charges, unarmed attacks, and being a mother-fucking viking. While this college didn't get any ultimate-style abilities like many of the others did, it has a wide variety of ability sets that work well with many different character archetypes. 

The Alternate Interim

The chrono college got 10 new abilities including 2 ultimates. Of all the revisions, this is the most likely one to get nerfed.

 

The High Artisans 

The arcane college  got 11 new abilities including the ability to dispel or overcharge magic, and some interesting new ways to counter and manipulate magic.

You can find all this new material in the Factions chapter of Character Creation starting on page 65. I would be interested to hear thoughts and comments on the new and existing ability sets.

Combat and Lore update!

In my ongoing attempt to clarify and expand Theory, I have updated the combat document and the Lore document. Nothing about the game changed mechanically, much of what was added was simply for clarification.
This time around, the player is introduced to the two types of combat maneuvers and how and when to use them. Then, we move on to explain how to use all different types of interrupts (with pictures!). If you are reading this blog post currently (of course you are) I would heavily recommend that you read the new combat document. It is likely that there was a previous misunderstanding, or that I may have jaded the content of the document in some way. In either case, I would like to know.

While perusing around some of the old Theory revisions, I found an interesting section that I decided to omit for some reason. "The Mechanics of Magic" now appears on page 7 of the lore document. This section describes how magic physically functions in the multiverse and where each type of magic is drawn from. While this doesn't give GMs or players anything to take and run with directly, I feel that it adds some flavor, and that tampering with mechanics like these can make for great high-level campaigns.

Another Scattered Update!

This time around I've added 2 shape metas, a brand new offensive maneuver and a new faction with its own set of faction abilities.

Final Strike

This offensive maneuver can only be used on your turn, and it immediately ends your turn when you do. It's metamartial progression makes it devastatingly powerful for one-hit-one-kill and defensive style players. It appears on page 25 of Character creation.

Globe and Rain (shape metas)

Globe is intended to have a dual purpose: Fighting upclose martial fighters and overcoming high damage reduction. Martial fighters will trigger the globe and damage themselves when attempting to brawl you or hit with an unarmed strike. The meta also increases the damage of your next spell by its damage roll, making no opponent safe.

Rain is a staple spell shape, impossible to go without. "Rain of fire", "Rain of lightning", "Rain of shadow (or Shadowrain)" fill that vital niche of a powerful mage calling massive amounts of magic from the sky. In Theory, rain also allows a mage free spell attacks during later rounds once they are higher level.

The Agency

The agency is a secretive organization interested in obtaining information. Its founder and leader, Myralith Gandin, has seen the collapse and fall of a million universes to the dark rot which takes the form or Ural in ours. They seek the secret to ending the rot and reversing its effects, and they will assassinate, replace, and infiltrate any faction to do it. Their faction abilities appear on page 68 of character creation, and a detailed breakdown of the faction appears on page 14 of the lore document.

While we're on the subject of factions, Two of the mage colleges clearly stand out above the others: the Agency and the Heretic Cabal. The other mage factions have pretty bland abilities presented in a formulated way that really makes them no different from each other. This will change. I fully intend to revise, re-revise, and re-re-re-revise the old mage colleges until they have the same amount (or more) depth as The Agency and the Heretic Cabal. While their lore functions and mechanics will not likely change, their faction abilities most definitely will.

You Are The Evolution

Before today I never really knew what I wanted to use as a slogan for theory. As most inspiration does, it just came to me:

 "I am the evolution" 

This doesn't refer to me, the creator of theory. It refers to you, the player. By playing,  reading, sharing thoughts and developing we bring about the evolution of this system and, who knows, maybe some powerful person will be influenced by what they read and will incorporate it into a system that will actually be famous some day. By exchanging our ideas and our thoughts we move drive forward the progress necessary to bring about change. And through change, we drive forward the exchange of ideas. This engine is the evolution that is driven by the motivation of the players, the GMs, the creators and the contributors of Theory.

Advanced Ammunition

In this update, I have added Advanced ammunition to the game. This should give marksmen even more customization and versatility, as well as a "cooldown" type of play. This ammunition is intended to be expensive and is not meant to be fired in place of regular ammo. In the section, I note that modern firearms are equipped with a secondary breach for loading such ammunition on the fly (a 5ap defensive action). The 7 different types of advanced ammo are:
-Incendiary Rounds -these set enemies on fire.
-Shredder Rounds -These are specialty hollow-point rounds that cause massive internal hemorrhaging
-Massive Rounds -These rounds gain mass as they travel and knock enemies back
-Healing Rounds -Are a little counter-intuitive, they allow you to shoot an ally and heal them for a set ammount
-Tracker Rounds -Offer a variety of different ways to track down an enemy on the run
-Magebreaker rounds -deal damage to health, mana, and reduce the victims spell matrix
-Chronosink rounds -Deal damage to a victims AP, and causes the victim to take massive damage if they are out of AP.

Check the new stuff out on page 57 of character creation

Polar Opposites: Tactics and Untrained abilities

This update includes an entirely new school of abilities for the marksman: Tactician

Tactical shot  and tactical aggression allow the marksman to get more use out of every shot based on tactical positioning while tactical repositioning makes lining those shots up quite a bit easier and magic bullet brings the aggression to an entirely new level. The idea here was to increase mobility based combat, i have always enjoyed games in which shaping the battlefield and tactical positioning are key and I feel that this school directly emphasizes both of those realms of thought.

You may now use many martial maneuvers untrained by taking a -5 to the attack roll, or for skills with no attack roll (but a strength check instead) you take a -4 to the strength roll. Each skill denoted this change individually. The problem came up: "why can't i attempt to shoot two pistols at once, even though I'm not trained in it." This is a valid question, and I agree, you should be able to at least  attempt a martial maneuver untrained. While I don't see this spilling over into something like magic or telekinesis, for martial it makes good sense.

Scattered update!

This update to the Theory Roleplaying game has been all over the place. To begin, I updated the lore document for the first time in almost a year. You can now read more about the various mage colleges, which i expect will add quite a bit more depth to the universe. Available colleges are: The Catricarch (Terra College), The Academy of High Artisans (Arcane College), The Heretic Cabal (Shadow College),  The Alternate Interim (Chrono College), and The Helioseminary (Light college). You may notice that I didn't mention a Fire college or a Frost college. These are still in development and will be added when I feel they are ready (and I don't at this point). Each college brings something unique to the table, something for players and GMs to interact with and use in more than one way, and I don't feel that I have gotten the Fire or Frost colleges to this point yet.

Grapple has been replaced with a new set of maneuvers called "Brawling". These abilities allow you to create a character entirely around this fighting style. It begins with the opening brawl: 

Once in a brawl, you have access to three new abilities: Pin, Subdue, and Throw.

Pin allows you to lockdown an opponent, maybe for later questioning, or maybe for a tactical advantage (like taking a healer out of the fight temporarily then dealing with him later). this type of play is focused on the long-term combat scenario.

Subdue allows you to do a medium amount of damage in a brawl without having to release the opponent. This type of play is much more focused on the mid-game of a combat scenario.

Throw allows you to toss your opponents around like ragdolls for your amusement. This ability releases your  hold on the opponent to deal massive damage.

Move has a new metamartial unlock called "Run". This ability allows you to directly increase the run speed of your character.

Everyone likes more stuff, right? Along that vein of thought, I have added Accessory items to the game, these include items like rings and necklaces, as well as expendable items like health and mana charges.

I have never really been a fan of the standard "chug down this potion in the middle of combat and get healed magically". it just never sat right with me. maybe it was something about ingesting the massive amount of liquid in such a small amount of time, or that it healed almost instantaneously even though most things you consume take time to get into the blood stream. there's also just something so "unmagical" about chugging a bottle of Robitussin in the middle of combat. And to that I say: "Health and mana charges." these items are like small healing grenades that explode with healing energy when cracked or smashed, affecting everyone in the area in a violent explosion of "feel-bettery-goodness".